A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #463 - Men at War 2: Stealing and Rape as Side Effects? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

With so many wars underway worldwide, we felt it was useful and 
necessary to address, in the September issue of Sicilia Libertaria, an 
aspect of armed conflict that doesn't always receive the attention it 
deserves: "side effects." This definition, which appears to have been 
derived from the pharmaceutical field to indicate an unforeseen effect 
of taking a drug (from the English "side effect"), generally refers to 
an unexpected result of an action, a secondary effect to the primary 
one, which, in the case of war, involves killing the enemy in arms. In 
this sense, characterizing these effects as unexpected, as well as 
secondary, also serves to justify them, at least for those who produce 
them, even if the line separating primary from secondary war objectives 
is blurry. For example, bombing a weapons factory or a fuel depot 
intended for war uses implies a knowledge that is difficult to deny: 
these factories contain workers or, often, nearby civilian buildings. In 
Gaza City, the Israeli army has invented a method that theoretically 
could avoid collateral damage: texting Palestinian civilians to evacuate 
to avoid the approaching bombing! In fact, it seems to add insult to 
injury, given that it's not easy to escape quickly, especially when 
thousands of people are involved.

There's also an aspect to consider in new technological wars, where the 
use of remotely directed drones allows specific targets to be identified 
thanks to satellite-generated intelligence. If a human is pulling the 
trigger, one might think that, even from afar, they might have some 
consideration for the innocent victims of their gunfire or bombs 
(although addiction to violent video games has sufficiently clouded any 
possibility of conscience); but what happens when a war AI is entrusted 
with the selection of human targets, as is happening in Gaza with drones 
or robot trucks loaded with bombs? (BBC News, September 26, 2025). In 
this case, aside from more or less generic descriptions of the 
objective, the AI must be given some indications as to when "the game is 
worth the candle," that is, how many civilian deaths justify the action? 
(Recall that this issue also applies to "intelligent" cars when they 
must choose between different potential "victims" in an unavoidable 
accident). The question makes a certain ethical sense, since it stems 
from the classic dilemma of the "greater good": is it permissible for a 
few to die to save many? Evidently, for Zionists, killing all 
Palestinians, perhaps turning them into terrorists, including children 
(the future rebels), is justifiable to save Israel, perhaps by extending 
its reach to all the world's Jews. In this context, the problem of 
"collateral effects" completely disappears, since the enemy is no longer 
limited to armed men in the opposite context, but is the entire people 
being fought against (identified in ethnic or "racial" terms, as in the 
case of Jews for Nazis and fascists or people of color in the US).

Satellites, drones, and digital attacks seem to have transformed our 
perception of war, derived from the history of warfare, including the 
last two world wars, where infantry soldiers were the ones who "got 
their hands dirty." However, while something has certainly changed, 
especially in communications networks, this new image of war "from afar" 
is false or, at any rate, partial. Indeed, if we look at current wars or 
invasions, we realize that they still involve physically occupying other 
peoples' territories, with more or less trained soldiers, often 
conscripts and even forcibly recruited. And, once again, the problem of 
collateral effects arises, and in these cases it's not just about stray 
bombs or projectiles, but the physical violence of trained and heavily 
armed men against defenseless populations, especially women and girls, 
including rape, a constant in human history of warfare.

The 2024 UN Secretary-General's report on "War-Related Sexual Violence" 
clarifies that this term "is used to refer to acts of rape, sexual 
slavery, prostitution, pregnancy, abortion, sterilization, forced 
marriage, and any other act of conflict-related direct sexual violence 
inflicted on women, men, girls, and boys." This typology stems from a 
growing body of cases, so much so that in August 2025, the UN warned of 
a sharp increase in sexual violence during ongoing conflicts, with 
growing reports in 21 countries, including the war in Ukraine and the 
Gaza conflict. As the latter case demonstrates, the recorded cases 
relate to both sides of the conflict. Currently, the highest reports of 
sexual violence in war have occurred in the Central African Republic, 
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Somalia, and South Sudan. 
In these countries, 90% of the reported cases involve women and girls, 
yet a previously underreported reality is emerging: 10% of cases involve 
men and boys, particularly those with different sexual orientations or 
gender identities. These people are often killed after being raped. 
According to this year's UN report, this sexual violence against men, 
adolescents, and children has increased, particularly among prisoners of 
war and, more generally, in prisons where it is used as a form of 
torture and humiliation to extract information, especially when the 
prisoners are Arab, as in the case of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or the 
infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, perpetrated by US soldiers. However, 
the most dramatic situation is unfolding in Ethiopia, in Tigray, where 
sexual violence against women and girls has taken on the dimensions of a 
strategy of total ethnic destruction, with pregnant women the most 
sought-after victims.

In many of these cases, we can no longer speak of "collateral effects," 
but of sexual violence deliberately used as a weapon of war and control 
of the defeated and subjugated population. A strategy that no longer 
aims to assimilate others and transform them into a cheap labor force, 
but rather a true project of extermination, supported and justified by 
supremacist ideologies. And this is not limited to Africa; it is a cold 
wind blowing particularly from the highly civilized North America and 
across Europe, with Trump as its chief officiant.

Emanuele Amodio

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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