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The eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002 was incomprehensibly brutal—it is estimated that half of all female refugees were raped and many thousands were killed. While the publicity surrounding sexual violence helped to create a general picture of women and girls as victims of the conflict, there has been little effort to understand female soldiers' involvement in, and experience of, the conflict. This book draws on interviews with seventy-five former female soldiers and over twenty local experts, providing a rare perspective on both the civil war and post-conflict development efforts in the country. It argues that post-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process, demonstrating that a clear recognition and understanding of the roles and experiences of female soldiers are central to both understanding the conflict and to crafting effective policy for the future.

Once considered nationalists, many insurgent groups are now labeled as terrorists and thought to endanger not just their own people, but the world. As the unprecedented trends in political violence among insurgents have taken shape, and as hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced, brutalized, and killed, this book provides startling insights that help to explain the nature of insurgent behavior. It draws from over one hundred interviews with insurgent soldiers, commanders, government officials, scholars, and civilians in Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq, offering a new understanding of insurgent group behavior and providing compelling and intimate portraits of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, and Kurdistan Workers' Party. The engaging narratives that emerge from the on-the-ground fieldwork provide incredibly valuable and accurate first-hand documentation of the tactics of some of the world's most notorious insurgent groups. The book offers the reader a timely and intimate understanding of these movements, and explains the changing behavior of insurgent groups toward the civilians they claim to represent.

Recent elections have seen women break records in terms of their representation in elective office. Yet, behind this story of progress is a tale of two parties. Democratic women are on a steady march toward equal representation in state legislatures and Congress. Democratic women in elective office are also becoming more reflective of the nation’s diversity in terms of their race and ethnicity. In contrast, gains for Republican women in elective office have stalled and in many cases reversed. Republicans in elective office today are even more male and more white than in the past. Why do patterns of legislative office holding among women vary so dramatically across the two parties? The central argument of this book is that several long-term, structural changes in American electoral politics—the ideological, regional, and racial realignment of the parties—have had a profound impact on the representation of women in elective office. These reinforcing trends have reshaped the electoral landscape and the parties’ respective cultures and in doing so have led to the emergence of a dramatic partisan gap among women in elective office, with Democratic women far outnumbering Republican women. The dramatic and growing partisan gap among women in elective office holds powerful implications for women’s representation, the nature and viability of the two parties, and policy debates and outcomes at the state and national level.

More so than in the past, the US is now embracing the logic of preventive force: using military force to counter potential threats around the globe before they have fully materialized. From the war in Iraq to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, outside of recognized war zones, this US re-interpretation of rightful self-defense raises critical questions about the wisdom of preventive force strategy: To what extent does preventive force enhance future security? Are the perceived benefits worth the potential costs? Is the US setting a dangerous international precedent? Although this volume focuses on the most currently used, yet relatively limited, use of preventive force—targeted killings—it has important implications for preventive force more broadly. This book thus offers a comprehensive resource that speaks to the contours of preventive force as a security strategy, as well as to practical, legal and ethical considerations concerning its implementation.