Thesis: In 1995 following the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars, about 60,000 women were reposted to have experienced some form of sexual abuse and assault in the Bosnian genocide. Many of the rape happened with an intent to demoralize, inflict deep psychological terror, and fracture communities Rape Warfare by Beverly Allen addresses and expands on the use of rape as a genocidal strategy in the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks and Croatians. Allen’s purpose in writing Rape Warfare while expanding on the limited scholarship for strategies of rape in cases of genocide is first and foremost about circulating the stories and experiences of victims and survivors of genocidal rape. Many U.S. media outlets did not cover the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars and had not circulated the stories of trauma survivors who attempted to share in order to call attention to the plight of women in Bosnia. Those who did circulate their experiences of trauma had only done so on deriving pleasure from their suffering and twisting their stories for their own purposes and benefits. Allen concludes that rape was used as an explicit genocidal strategy against Bosniaks and Croats by its attempts to prevent births within the ethnic group by “creating” Serbian children and cleansing ethnic Bosnians.
Methods: In order to
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When briefing the reader on the history of the Bogomils ethnic religious group, background information on the concept of identity is informed and recounted by a Sarajevan woman. History can often be attributed as identity markers for ethnic groups. Considering the emphasis in the section about identity, Allen could have benefited from discussing the differential aspects of history that is taught between the two ethnic groups, for example comparing historical perspective of the origins of the Bogomils and the Serbs and how these differential perspectives of history contributed to the 1995