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Allows them a longer, torturous life in a changing national culture where women without a network of related male protectors are increasingly considered little more than beggers or whores and children without family considered little more than fodder for slavers or militia.
This, on top of losing a trusted and loved life partner, brothers, fathers, cousins and uncles...
A terrible future for many of these refugees to contemplate. From what I've read of news reports, many of these women - even with children in tow - have decided not to flee and to chance dying with their male family members and protectors rather than to face such a potental fate in an increasingly fundimentalist culture.
Sexist? To a major degree, yes...certainly there are males in Fallujah - probably doctors, teachers, "nerds", handicapped, the aged or those who see business opportunities scamming foreigners - who have no interest in insurrection just as there are certainly women and children who are sick and tired of what they might precieve as an invasion by those who are determined to destroy their culture and traditions and would be eager to strap bombs to their bodies, drive a bomb-laiden vehicle or otherwise pick up a rifle against those they think are stealing their country from them...
To me, this is just another subtly sick form of mental and emotional torture on a people who are already conflicted. If faced with a choice - to save yourself for an uncertain future, you must leave your home and loved one(s) to face "unfair", potentially fatal retribution by an army surrounding your city, or to stand next to your loved one and face fate together - come what may - what would you do?
As it is, IMO, this entire exercise of "saving women and children" is only an attempt to assuage the sensibilities of the individual soldiers surrounding Fallujah, not to actually save lives. If an army is going to level a town in retribution, the individual soldier already knows he or she is going to be engaged in destroying the innocent along with the "guilty". This way, it looks "better" to western sensibilities and the media.
("Hey, don't blame me, I gave them a chance to save the kiddies before I destroyed their homes, their family, and their future...")
Haele
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