Zainab Salbi: Women, War-time and the Dream of Peace

January 2, 2011 by Gail
Filed under VidStyle

In war we often see only the frontline stories of soldiers and combat. Zainab Salbi tells powerful “backline” stories of women who keep everyday life going during conflicts, and calls for women to have a place at the negotiating table once fighting is over.

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ABOUT Zainab Salbi

“In her memoir Hidden in Plain Sight: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam, Zainab Salbi writes of being raised in Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, her father was Saddam’s personal pilot. She left Iraq for an arranged marriage in the US, which quickly became another form of tyranny. But in 1993, when she heard of the rape and concentration camps in Bosnia, she realised she could no longer remain passive.

Zainab founded Women for Women International to help women who are victims of war in every way from those who’ve been physically harmed to those who suffer from the poverty that war and strife inevitably bring. WFWI provides economic and emotional aid, job-skills training, and rights education, empowering women to stop the cycle of violence and create social change.

In her latest book ‘The Other Side of War’, she shares personal stories of women’s experience in conflict. As she writes: “War is not a computer-generated missile striking a digital map. War is the colour of earth as it explodes in our faces, the sound of child pleading, the smell of smoke and fear. Women survivors of war are not the single image portrayed on the television screen, but the glue that holds families and countries together. Perhaps by understanding women, and the other side of war we will have more humility in our discussions of wars, perhaps it is time to listen to women’s side of history.”

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