I borrowed this slogan from a recent rally in support of the people of Ukraine, organised by an informal group of anti-war activists in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. We used it on one of our signs and it quickly became one of our most popular signs, appreciated by Bosnians who, much like countless others, have lived through a war they did not ask for, did not want to participate in, and who are still living the consequences of this world order, neatly embroidered in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s post-war reconstruction and recovery.

We used this slogan in pure fury and frustration over the images of the Russian military rolling in over the sovereign territory of Ukraine, starting yet another imperialist invasion. I stand by the title of this blog despite its “inappropriateness” because what is inappropriate are the cold calculations of how many people in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, and countless other countries, must die for the global powers to maintain this world order. What is inappropriate is a world order in which imperialism and destruction are used as legitimate tools in a never-ending capitalist project to expand, appropriate, extract, and profit.

The list of those participating in maintaining this militarised world order is long and stretches far beyond Russian Federation: USA, China, Israel, Japan, Pakistan, India, European Union collectively and each of its members individually, NATO, to name a few. There are no innocent bystanders among these states in the war over Ukraine, as much as there wasn’t and isn’t in South Sudan, Cameroon, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Palestine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the many coups d’etat in Latin America, and on and on it goes.

Beyond calculations and political statements

We all know how we ended up in this mess. There are many great analyses out there (Ray Acheson, Tom Bramble, Almut Rochowanski, Volodymyr Ishchenko among others), so no need to repeat. What I want to write about is all those brave people that stand up for peace and against weapons and militarisation, and what it means to be an anti-war activist in a context when war is normalised, and death and destruction romanticised.

Beyond the cold calculations and political statements there are thousands of humans, each with their stories of death, destruction, broken family ties, broken dreams. Beyond all of that there are stories of great sadness and fear, but also of strength, care, love, and survival. If we scratch away the surface from the almost ecstatic media reporting on the war in Ukraine, we will find the individual, collective, and societal trauma that inevitably stays with those who will survive, long after the war-wagers and their geopolitical games move on to the next war.

Acts of resistance

The contexts for our anti-war struggles are dynamic and fast changing. No one knows that better than Syrian women activists who saw their peaceful uprising against an oppressive regime quickly turn into a bloody war; or women in Afghanistan who were literally overnight abandoned to struggle for dignity and equality by those that claim to hold these values high. The women in Ukraine worked tirelessly post-Maidan to create conditions for women’s participation in peacebuilding. All these women have learnt the hard way that one day it is safe to be an anti-war activist, the next you are putting your life at risk.

Right now, the biggest act of resistance for Ukrainian people is surviving Russian government’s imperialist war, because each person that is killed is a victory for the war machine. Each person that survives is a cog in the wheel. But of course, the people in Ukraine are not only surviving but also standing up to war; they are organising in their communities to help each other, providing shelter and food for internally displaced; they are documenting the war crimes and their experiences of war and displacement; they are engaging in non-violent resistance such as by changing street signs or encircling tanks, opposing the war machine with their bodies. In an interview for Democracy Now Yurii Sheliazhenko, a representative of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, talked about how the Ukrainian peace movement “warned for years that reckless militarization will lead to war” and how they were preparing for non-violent actions.

Many of Ukrainians have of course taken up weapons as well, women and men alike. Some voluntarily and some because they were not given a choice. Sometimes people are forced to defend themselves to survive. Whoever finds oneself in such a situation will know that making that choice is extremely difficult. As a feminist, but most of all as someone who has experienced war, I am careful not to oversimplify the context in which each person must make that decision.  For men, this is often not even a question of choice because they are dealing with imposed duty to defend (through conscription) and negated right to choose not to pick up arms and to say no to forced militarisation.

Militarised “solidarity”

Countries supporting Ukraine have rushed to supply Ukraine with weapons, in a show of some sort of militarised solidarity. This is another difficult question from the perspective of anti-war activism. Once war breaks out, not being able to defend oneself can mean an almost certain death. On the other hand, more weapons will not lead to end of war but to more death. Should people have the right to self-defence? Absolutely. Will that right save their lives and ensure a future? I’m not so sure. Most people I know from Bosnia and Herzegovina will say that back in the day they perceived “defending” Bosnia as important. Now they say there is no nation or country that is worth dying for because we have all lost so much, while the world order which brought the war to our doorsteps has remained, ushering us in yet another conflict.

Our feminist responsibility

But for sure none of these issues are simple. The position that I hold, which is to always, and everywhere, oppose war and militarisation, is based on my lived experiences, but it is also guided by feminist values.

My position is that as feminists and anti-war activists, our responsibility lies with those oppressed. We don’t have a responsibility towards the capitalist notion of nation-states. Our duty lies not with flags, borders, or with upholding or reproducing the geopolitical narratives. Our responsibility, inherited from our foremothers through more than 100 years of feminist anti-capitalist, anti-war struggles is towards peace, towards solidarity, equality, and justice, and towards subversion of patriarchal power and militarism. Our responsibility is towards the people and our collective right to live a dignified life in peace.

Which is why we must do everything that we can to support those that raise their voices for peace even when their lives are at risk. We owe them that much. They risk their lives knowingly and by doing that they keep the peace firmly grounded in our collective effort to build a better tomorrow, instead of it becoming a utopian dream that all too easy can be brushed away.

All of us who stand up for peace

Supporting the people in Ukraine and their struggle to survive and stand up to the war machine, is imperative. Other important actions that need to be supported are those of Russian feminists, who have been among the strongest anti-war voices in Russia. Being against the war in Ukraine is dangerous under Putin’s repressive regime, and can lead to up to 15 years in prison.  Feminists have been taking part in anti-war demonstrations around Russia and also recently issued a manifesto against the war, calling on “Russian feminist groups and individual feminists to join the Feminist Anti-War Resistance and unite forces to actively oppose the war and the government that started it.” They also call on feminists all over the world to join them. They see beyond Putin’s propaganda and fake-news, firmly standing on feminist grounds, knowing that no feminist can ever support aggression, military occupation, or an imperialist endeavour.

Being part of the anti-war movement in Russia or Belarus, who has joined Putin in his imperialist war, is a brave act. In Russia, between 24 February and 6 March, 12,702 anti-war protestors have been arrested according to OVD-info, an independent Russian human rights watchdog. That number is rising every day. A petition to stop the war in Ukraine has to date gathered over 1.18 million signatures. Russian culture workers, scientists, students and professors, sommeliers and wine trade workers, publishers, editors and booksellers, and many more from all walks of life have raised their voices against the Russian invasion.

Will this be enough to stop Putin’s war in Ukraine? I can only hope so. It depends on how much the rest of us mobilise, support, and amplify these voices. We all know that in the polarised and increasingly isolated world (despite all our social media platforms), this is not an easy task. But even if we fail now, these voices will matter, and they will define many years to come, because if we don’t push back against the war-thirsty voices and narratives now, soon enough that will be all we know. Each next war will be even easier to wage, each death more acceptable, the destruction of our societies and the planet more obscured. We already see it happening.

A feminist responsibility to oppose war wherever it takes place

Each war that was not stopped sowed seeds for a new one. Syrian activists remind us how failure to stop Putin in Syria contributed to this very moment. They see the importance of raising their voices against the war in Ukraine because each war, from a feminist international solidarity perspective, is a war at home, no matter where it takes place.

When the world did not stop the United States from invading Afghanistan and Iraq, when so many countries accepted the so-called “Global War on Terror,” they failed to uphold international law and to call out the imperialist games of the so-called global powers. Those and many other failures paved the way for every war that came.

So, while standing in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, our calls for peace, our anti-war activism, must go far beyond that. Our analysis of how we ended up with yet another war, and what must be done to stop it, must build on the understanding that militarism, patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism are structures that rely and thrive on war as a tool. Therefore, we cannot build sustainable peace, in Ukraine or elsewhere, if we do not simultaneously work on abolishing these structures.

Each voice matters. Each anti-war action matters. Supporting those affected by the war so that their voices can be heard; meeting the immediate humanitarian needs; supporting and helping people to leave their worn torn countries so that they can live in peace; organising rallies; speaking out against war—it all matters!

In 2016, Bosnian women activists hosted a solidarity dialogue with Ukrainian women. Perhaps a fitting end to this blog is a quote from a Bosnian peace activist, Jasminka Drino Kirlić, who in her welcoming speech said:

Peace is non-violent action, it is action against injustice, and peace is to open the discussion about the most difficult parts of our lives. Peace is prudence; peace is creativity in finding solutions. Peace is about building trust and restoring the sense of solidarity amongst us. . . I am a peacemaker. And they have asked me, “What is that?” Let me tell you what that is: it is when I do not accept things that are forced upon us; that is when I am nobly radical. Being nobly radical means that I will tell you every time I disagree with you and at the same time I will not see you as my enemy.

Thanks to Ray Acheson and Gorana Mlinarević for input to this blog.