Love in war? The strategic use of intimacy in armed conflict

Abstract

The strategic use of intimacy to achieve concrete objectives during war has not been systematically or comprehensively analysed. This article presents the cases of civilian women in armed conflict situations who acceded to or initiated intimate relationships with armed actors in order to achieve specific objectives. It focuses on ‘strategic intimacy’, analysing it from the perspective of civilian women in areas impacted by Colombia’s armed conflict. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Colombian civilian women who were the intimate partners of armed actors, it demonstrates that in violent contexts where state protection is lacking and armed groups govern large swaths of territory, women civilians may resort to their own devices to achieve objectives that government institutions or other non-state protective entities would have otherwise been responsible for. Due to their status as intimate partners and the subsequent influence they could exert from this positioning, civilian women were able to sway how their armed actor partners behaved as a form of gendered micro-governance: they exerted pressure on them and encouraged them to protect others and to share and gather information.

Keywords:

• Gender
• resistance
• armed conflict
• civilian agency
• Colombia

Introduction

En la guerra y el amor todo se vale (‘All’s fair in love and war’).¹

– Interview with a former member of the Colombian National Liberation Army (16 June 2022).

Gendered agency in war is a growing subfield of academic literature, and many scholars have emphasised the need to differentiate between how civilian men and women respond to violence (Berry 2017; Krause 2019; Rhoads and Sutton 2020). There are increasing calls for researchers to analyse agency ‘within the context in which women are able to act’ and to focus on ‘women’s small acts and quiet politics’ that would otherwise be overlooked (Hume and Wilding 2020, 3–4). Within this subfield, however, apart from rare case study exceptions (Baines 2015; Utas 2005), gendered explorations of civilian agency in war do not focus on the strategic use of intimacy and relationships as a tool for agency. This article thus makes an empirical and theoretical contribution about civilian women’s strategic use of intimacy in wartime situations.

In war, life is disrupted and people are vulnerable, with material and protection needs. When focusing on civilian women in Colombia’s armed conflict, it becomes clear that women strategically deployed intimacy in war settings with varying motives. This article finds that there are at least two principal ‘strategic intimacy’ objectives: (1) strategic intimacy for protection, and (2) strategic intimacy to gather information. It also identifies two tactics that women used to achieve their objectives, specifically the strategic performance of emotions and the strategic use of physicality. To explain these strategic behaviours, the article draws on the work of scholars who develop dramaturgical and performance theory (Goffman 1956; Hochschild 1983).

The findings presented below build upon existing academic literature in the following ways. First, they highlight the connection between civilian women’s agency and their intimate lives during conflict. The women’s strategies directly tie to the aforementioned work on gendered civilian agency, a body of literature that emphasises that women in conflict zones are actively engaged individuals, and not just passive victims (Hume and Wilding 2020; Stallone 2022; Zulver 2022). Due to the Colombian state’s failure to respond to their needs, women civilians strategically cultivated relationships with armed actors to protect themselves and others. In the process, they determined that ‘opting out’ (Kalyvas and Kocher 2007) of such relationships would be worse than engaging in intimacy with armed actors. The article also reveals how intimate relationships shape local armed actor behaviour and social order (Arjona 2016) through a process of gendered micro-governance. Due to their status as intimate partners and the subsequent influence they could exert from this positioning, civilian women were able to sway how their armed actor partners behaved in the territories they were governing: they exerted pressure on them and encouraged them to protect others and to share information. This article, therefore, not only demonstrates how gender and social positioning interact to shape civilian agency possibilities (Berry 2018; Hurwitz and Crossley 2018; Viterna 2013), but also how gender, social positioning, and intimacy come together to shape local illegal armed actor governance and social order in war zones.

Drawing on in-depth interviews, the article provides unique and important insights into women’s strategic experiences of intimacy during war and conflict by revealing how they may ‘bargain with patriarchy’ to achieve specific outcomes (Kandiyoti 1988). By focusing on strategic intimacy as a gendered practice, it sheds light on how patriarchal gender regimes shape which behaviours are viable and for whom in conflict scenarios. Kandiyoti (1988, 274) writes that ‘[d]ifferent forms of patriarchy present women with distinct “rules of the game” and call for different strategies to maximize security and optimize life options with varying potential for active or passive resistance in the face of oppression’. In other words, women may engage in tacit ‘patriarchal bargains’ in order to improve their life conditions in sex-oppressive spaces in which men are considered full human subjects while women are objectified (Kandiyoti 1988). For the civilian women discussed in this article, the use of strategic intimacy in relationships with armed actors represents a ‘patriarchal bargain’ during moments of conflict.

This article first introduces relevant theoretical work that supports the strategic use of intimacy in conflict settings. It then defines strategic intimacy and presents a performative framework to theorise this practice, followed by the methodological approach. Next, it provides an historical background on Colombia’s armed conflict. Afterwards, it presents empirical data to reveal the ways in which women performed intimacy to gain protection and information from armed actors with power in their communities. The article concludes with broader reflections on this practice in the Colombian context, especially the risks and protection gaps for women who opt to pursue strategic intimacy.

Relevant theoretical and historical work

When it comes to intimate explanations for micro-level shifts in wartime dynamics, there are a number of relevant literatures that serve as pillars. The existing sociological and psychological literature has established intimacy as a broad term, which can involve many behaviours that foster closeness, connections, and a sense of familiarity between individuals. These behaviours include but are not limited to the ‘verbal disclosure of emotions’ (Illouz 2012, 38); emotional support (Zelizer 2005); sharing personal information or secrets (Zelizer 2005); sexual activity (Luhmann 1982); other forms of nonverbal communication like eye contact and touching (Berscheid and Reis 1998, 224); and acts of care, validation and understanding (Berscheid and Reis 1998).

Indeed, the fact that women have looked to intimacy and intimate relations – as defined above – to achieve particular objectives has been noted by multiple scholars; however, this generally takes place in non-wartime settings. For instance, scholars have written about sexual allusions to achieve particular objectives in workplace scenarios, such as tips in a restaurant (Tibbals 2007), or touching or kissing to obtain workplace favours (Watkins, Smith, and Aquino 2013). Hoang (2015) writes about female sex workers in Viet Nam who develop agency and exchange companionship and sexual intimacy for money and other perks (Hoang 2015). These exchanges involved performances of submissive and feminine roles during sexually intimate interactions with different types of male clients. Relatedly, Zelizer (2005) examines the relationship between ‘intimate personal relations’ and economic activities, such as monetary transfers. She finds that ‘people often mingle economic activity with intimacy’ in the form of exchanges, such as money for sex (Zelizer 2005, 1). Meanwhile, in her study of a rural shantytown in Brazil, Scheper-Hughes (1993) finds that some women engaged in sexual relationships with rich and powerful men to ensure their own survival in the community.

Although the focus of this article is on strategic wartime intimacy, examples like the above reveal that strategic intimacy, much like the forms of structural and physical violence that these women faced, occurs along a continuum that extends from periods of peace to wartime (Cockburn 2004; Moser 2001). In other words, the use of intimacy to achieve particular objectives does not only happen in wartime. When the use of intimacy does occur during war, however, the objectives (outcomes) can vary when compared to times of peace.

Scholars have drawn attention to civilian women’s strategic partnerships in violent contexts, but they typically do so through singular anthropological studies of individuals (Baines 2015; Utas 2005), only mention the topic in passing (Boesten 2010; Theidon 2012), or focus on examples from urban gang conflicts (Baird 2015). For example, Marks (2014, 83) finds that for members of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone, ‘being a wife with status was an important way in which women could seek security and survival for themselves and their children’. Similarly, Utas (2005) explores the agency of a woman called Bintu who strategically ‘loved’ different men in the Liberian war context for protection and economic goods. Meanwhile, in Nazi Germany, Finkel (2017, 108) found that Jewish women would seek out sexual relationships with German officials in exchange for protection from other types of violence. Relatedly, Stallone and Braun (2023) explore how Dutch women rescuers of Jews during World War II used flirtation with Nazi guards as one strategy to slip under the radar and protect Jews from persecution during the Holocaust. Similarly, during the German occupation of France, French women developed relationships with Nazi soldiers as a form of self-preservation and survival (Duchen 2003). Although the detail in these sources is limited, these examples from historical and present-day conflicts reveal that intimate behaviours have been used to prevent or manage wartime dynamics. This article takes a much deeper dive into the dynamics, outcomes and performative nature of such behaviours.

A performative theory of intimacy

In examining the strategic use of intimacy in wartime settings, this study was inspired by several theoretical tools that use acting and performances as a way to assess human behaviour. Goffman (1956, 13) uses the word ‘“performance” to refer to all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers’. He coined the term ‘impression management’ and uses the analogy of a theatre to demonstrate that human beings engage in performances to manage how the outside world perceives them. When they engage in ‘frontstage’ performances, people are curating how they wish others (the ‘audience’) to see them. With ‘backstage’ activities, in contrast, they are behaving as they would without an audience (Goffman 1956, 66–86). Such performances require consistency and ‘dramaturgical discipline’ (Goffman 1956). Put differently, if a person’s true feelings do not actually coincide with how they present themselves frontstage, they ‘must take care to enliven their performances with appropriate expressions, exclude from their performances expressions that might discredit the impression being fostered, and take care lest the audience impute unintended meanings’ (Goffman 1956, 44). Goffman shows that people may work on frontstage performances in order to achieve particular objectives, either for their own benefit or for that of others (Goffman 1956).²

Hochschild similarly notes that actors may ‘try to seem’ a particular way to their audiences (1983, 35). For instance, an actor may try to externally appear happy even though internally they may actually feel anger, disgust, and/or sadness, among other things. They may perform through their speech, or perhaps a smile. This is tied to what Hochschild (1983, 68) calls ‘surface acting’, through which ‘we deceive others about what we really feel, but we do not deceive ourselves’. In other words, the actor remains well aware of the role they are engaged in throughout their performance. Hochschild (1983) contrasts her work on ‘surface acting’ with what she calls ‘deep acting’. While surface acting creates an ‘outward appearance’ of a feeling, deep acting creates an ‘inner shape of a feeling’, or ‘a real feeling that has been self-induced’ (Hochschild 1983, 35–36). This is related to what Goffman (1956) has called the ‘backstage’ space. This is the site of what people are truly feeling, as opposed to the ‘frontstage’ outer appearance they present to the world. Building on these theoretical works on physical and emotional performances, this article uses a performative lens to look at intimacy in war contexts.

Strategic intimacy in conflict settings

If we apply these theories to intimate relationships in precarious wartime settings, one might predict that women may strategically curate how they present themselves to establish intimacy and, in return, receive benefits and exert influence within a relationship. While women do this in both war and non-war settings, this article reveals that women in war settings do so to achieve different objectives, especially in the context of an absent state. In this context, they determine that ‘participating in’ and developing relationships with armed actors with intimacy is less costly than staying away from or ‘opting out’ of them (Kalyvas and Kocher 2007). Increasing intimate proximity with armed actors allows them to achieve protection and information goals that would have otherwise been inaccessible.

This article finds that women in conflict spaces engage in strategic intimacy, which I define as the calculated use of intimate behaviours to achieve specific objectives in wartime scenarios. To successfully use intimacy as a tool to achieve objectives in conflict scenarios, certain outward appearances must be maintained. In order to explore how strategic wartime intimacy happens, the article outlines two tactics, using the case study of Colombia’s armed conflict: (1) strategic performances of emotions; and (2) strategic physicality. The research points to the ways in which women performed different emotions, such as concern, worry and happiness, to pursue their objectives. While strategic emotional performances make it seem that the actor is feeling a particular intimate emotion, strategic physicality involves physical or bodily contact used to achieve outcomes. Strategic physicality operates along a scale, and includes physical actions such as petting or touching, kissing, and sex itself (as an infrequent sexual act or an extended sexual relationship). In the cases included here, strategic physicality included women actively initiating intimate behaviours, as well as the strategic submission (Stallone 2022) to unwanted intimate physical advances by others in order to achieve objectives.

These tactics of strategic intimacy – whether combined as overlapping types or on their own – were evident throughout the Colombian conflict scenarios, as will be discussed in the following section. This article reveals that these strategic intimate tactics foster closeness and proximity, which, in turn, lead to spaces from which women were able to shape the actions and behaviour of others, developing a form of governance (Arjona 2016) at the micro and gendered level. It also finds that strategic wartime intimacy happens when there is problematic or insufficient state presence (or the presence of other protective entities) in the area where the women are located. That is, in such situations civilian women engage in strategic intimacy to achieve two specific objectives: to gain or provide protection, and to gather information.

Methods

The research for this article comes from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with women ex-partners of armed actors that I conducted between 2021 and 2023 in Colombia. After obtaining informed consent, I began by asking the women broad queries about their backgrounds, and waited until I sensed they were comfortable answering questions before asking more sensitive questions. Finding interviewees was not easy, and required extensive engagement with local contacts and networks that I have built over nearly a decade researching armed conflict in Colombia. Prior to initiating the present study, the ethics committee at the University of California, Berkeley approved this research (IRB 2020-01-12903). My overall goal in all interviews was to ascertain what motivated the relationships and how and why my respondents became intimately involved with their combatant partners.

Methodologically, this research is not focused on prevalence, nor it is an exhaustive overview of strategic intimacy. Instead, using detailed case studies, it examines the process of how women deployed strategic intimacy, for what purposes, and when they did so. Building on trusting relationships with my interlocutors and respondents, I was able to document the experiences of a total of 10 civilian women who shared that they used strategic intimacy with armed actors. However, simply because a person had a relationship with an armed actor does not mean that they were necessarily engaged in strategic intimacy. At least seven other civilian women I interviewed told me about their relationships with armed actors, but did not describe these as involving the use of strategic intimacy. Instead, they shared that they were enamoradas (in love) with the armed actors, simply liked being around them, enjoyed their company and/or were interested in what the men were doing in the armed groups. In such cases, I assumed these women understood their own motivations and behaviours, and moved on to subsequent interviews. I encountered only one male civilian who had a relationship with a woman armed actor. This male civilian, like half of the women civilians I interviewed, shared that he fell in love with his partner and did not comment on strategic behaviours within his relationship.

Case study: strategic intimacy as civilian agency in Colombia’s armed conflict

Colombia offers a unique opportunity to study the strategic use of intimate relationships in wartime settings. The Colombian conflict has lasted for over 60 years, and it has involved a variety of armed groups. As a result, an analysis of this conflict is not isolated to a singular time period or specific armed group. As Colombia grapples with ongoing conflict – and also attempts to rebuild the social fabric in the aftermath of the 2016 peace accord – it is more important than ever to listen to, amplify, and understand women’s voices in order to take advantage of this attempt at peace.

In Colombia, armed conflict violence has taken a dramatic toll on society while different actors such as the Colombian Armed Forces, conservative paramilitary groups, narco-traffickers, and leftist guerrilla rebels have battled for territory. At the end of 2016, the Colombian government began to implement peace accords that it negotiated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla. These peace accords, however, have not translated into comprehensive peace on the ground. Academics and policymakers have concluded that the accords overpromised and underdelivered, ‘generating expectations that exceed the capacities of existing national state institutions, as well as the political will for reform by significant social sectors’ (Rettberg 2020, 84). Armed groups’ actions continue to impact civilians, and social leaders and human rights activists are being killed in Colombia at the highest rate in the world (INDEPAZ 2021).

In Colombian conflict zones, women have been disproportionately targeted with specific types of violence, some of which have already been outlined above. As of 2020, 15,760 instances of sexual violence related to the armed conflict had been reported (CNMH 2021). Scholars of the Colombian conflict have noted that armed men may be affected by a form of ‘masculine greed’ via which women become ‘status symbols’ for armed actors ‘seeking legitimacy’ (Wills 2011). In such times, men may boost their standing and demonstrate ‘masculine capital’ via their ‘sexual access to women’ (Baird 2015). In other words, in such spaces, a woman becomes ‘identified as one whose sexuality exists for someone else, who is socially male’ (MacKinnon 1982, 533). Although it is widely known that women’s experiences of violence in Colombia are shaped by their gender (Basta Ya! Colombia 2013; Meertens 2010), analyses of civilian agency from a gendered perspective are uncommon, and tend to emphasise women’s collective action after gender-based violence has already occurred (Kreft 2019; Zulver 2022). In the Colombian context, we know very little about how women civilians strategically protect themselves during wartime situations, and even less about how they use intimacy to do so.

Although the women introduced in the sections below narrate their own experiences and say they pursued and used these relationships for specific purposes, it is important to underscore the context in which these relationships occurred. The women resorted to this form of agency because of the limited options available to them – many told me that going to the Colombian state (police or public forces) or other protective bodies was or would have been useless (Stallone 2022). These were last-resort efforts to secure protection in contexts in which armed actors ran things – not the Colombian state.

Strategic intimacy for protection

In interviews, women in distinct contexts of violence (left-wing, paramilitary, armed gang) reflected on exchanging performances of intimacy for protection and using the different tactics outlined above. The case of a woman named Lucia illustrates the dynamic of strategic intimacy for protection. Lucia grew up in Caquetá in an area that was, for many years, a FARC stronghold. As a young woman living where the FARC (as opposed to the Colombian state) created and upheld its own laws for local populations, Lucia explained that she became the girlfriend of a local commander as a way to protect herself and her family members:

Lucia: In one way or another, I felt obligated – I felt obligated by my family as well. I mean, not because they were forcing me, but because I wanted them to be all right. […] At that time women had no influence or anything like that. So what did I have to do? I had to show bravery. And next to [the commander] people had to be respectful.

KS: And did he [the commander] help your family?

Lucia: Yes, of course, by protecting them. In other words, [my relationship with the commander meant] ‘these are my people, which means those other people won’t do anything to them’. (11 November 2021)

When I asked her if there was state protection in the area at that time, she said ‘no’. She explained that she went to the FARC instead of a state entity ‘because they [the FARC] were the ones who had influence […] it was known that there were police and all that … but there was no protection like that [by the police]’ (Interview, 19 April 2023).

Lucia explained that the relationship made her uncomfortable, particularly because she was hiding her sexual identity at the time. She told me that she identified as a lesbian, even while in a relationship with the FARC commander.³ She said the relationship was difficult because she did not feel attracted to the commander, and she shared that she feigned expressions of intimacy that she did not feel:

I had to act as if I was totally in love back then. […] We walked hand in hand like people in love. […] He would show up and every time he arrived, he would always arrive with his people. And I would go out, hug him, give him a kiss and show that I was worried about him. (11 November 2021)

Despite the discomfort that came with feigning and performing expressions of intimacy, Lucia explained that she found these behaviours necessary to keep up the relationship and avoid problems. She also did so to protect herself and limit the potential risks that came with her gender identity. She explained to me that LGBT individuals were rejected and sometimes even punished and harmed. LGBT discrimination was not uncommon in conflict zones around Colombia, and there is evidence that both guerrilla and paramilitary groups stigmatised the LGBT community in the areas they occupied (Comisión de la Verdad 2022b; Ritholtz 2023). Lucia’s recognition of her need to pursue a heterosexual relationship to protect herself makes evident that heterosexuality was compulsory (Rich 1980) in the area where she lived. In the quote above, Lucia also reflected that she wanted to protect her family. Thus, even though she did not like being with the commander and did not have intimate feelings for him, she put forward an outward performance that she did.

In addition to protection for themselves and their families, women involved in these relationships also used their intimate proximity to armed actors to secure protection for other community members. Lucia, for instance, was able to influence her armed actor boyfriend to protect others in her community. She shared: ‘The man [the commander] was in love with me at the time, so I would tell him: “Leave those people alone, don’t do anything there”. And he would say to me, “Yes, ok, let’s go”’ (11 November 2021).

She then provided a more specific example:

Lucia: Let’s say he wanted to ask a shop owner for money. I would look at the business and see that the owners were having a hard time, that the shop could only provide the bare minimum for them. So I told him: ‘Look, these people are in bad shape, the business is in trouble’.

KS: And it worked?

Lucia: It worked. At the time it worked. (11 November 2021)

In other words, from her status position as his girlfriend and from the space of influence this provided, Lucia shaped the local commander’s behaviour in small ways by protecting community members from extortion. Scholars who study armed actor governance in civilian communities have made the point that when civilians show agency in conflict situations, patterns of armed actor governance may shift in kind (Arjona 2016; Mampilly 2011). In Lucia’s case, this ‘micro-form of governance’ (Arjona 2016) became possible through her relationship with him.

Lucia’s case underscores several important facets of the logic of strategic intimacy that was presented above. First, she notes that the state did not have much of a presence in the area. Instead, she said armed actors had influence, and for this reason she went to the FARC instead of going to local police, for instance. Second, Lucia notes that she was in a relationship with a FARC commander, and that people respected him. The majority of the civilian women I interviewed for this article strategically formed relationships with commanders as opposed to lower ranking members of armed groups. Commanders, due to their status, were more able to provide for them, protect them and respond to their requests. Having a commander partner, as opposed to a lower-ranking partner, gave them more range to influence action because the commanders were able to actually lead and make decisions. Third, Lucia reflects on her strategic performance of emotions, saying that she acted ‘totally in love’, which included showing concern about him when he was away. This was in contrast to her ‘backstage’ feelings – Lucia expressed that she was not attracted to the commander. She also commented on strategic physicality, which involved hugging and kissing him. She noted the need to outwardly express that she was passionate about his work in order to successfully present as his partner (even though she was not actually passionate about his work). Through these tactics, Lucia established and maintained her relationship and was able to protect herself and exert pressure on the commander to take care of other people she also wanted to protect from harm. Her exchanges with the commander reflect what Mampilly (2011, 15) means when he notes that ‘governance, by practice, is an interactive process’. In other words, through her strategically intimate interactions with the commander as a civilian woman, Lucia counterbalanced armed actor control by protecting community members from harm.

Another element of strategic intimacy for protection can be observed from the case of Isabela, who lived in the Colombia–Venezuela border region and used intimacy to escape domestic abuse. Isabela explained that her then husband, who was part of a right-wing armed gang, threatened and abused her on a regular basis, and would not leave her alone even when she tried to distance herself and her daughters from him. As a result, she sought to become the local commander’s partner to put her husband in line. In her words, she sought this relationship:

Isabela: To get away from him [my husband] and so he would stop bothering us […] I had to get mixed up with a person who gave him orders – with someone higher up than he was. […] They [combatants] always have people above them, and so I had to take care around the person who gave him [my husband] orders so I could get him off my back.

KS: And how did you take care around that person?

Isabela: I used to go out all put together and [I noticed] the commander was interested in me… […] I told him [the commander] what was happening with him [my husband], and then we went out together for a little while so he [my husband] would go away – to get him away from me and so he wouldn’t bother me. […]

KS: And did you feel something for this other person [the commander]?

Isabela: (She shakes her head ‘no’). But he was a good guy. I mean, even though he was involved in all of that [armed group activities], he wasn’t like that [a bad person]. (14 June 2022)

Even though she did not feel anything romantic for the commander, to ensure the success of her relationship with the commander above her abusive husband, Isabela shared she felt the need ‘to hug him and be affectionate’ in public. She also notes that she used to go out ‘put together’, and that this attracted the commander’s attention. Isabela subsequently explained that the commander told her abusive husband to leave her ‘in peace’, and that her husband obeyed this order. I asked how she knew her husband would listen if she went to the commander. She responded:

Because they [lower ranking members of the armed group] have to obey. Among themselves they respect [one another]. […] I could tell he [the commander] was interested in me. I could see that. So I mentioned this to a friend, and she told me that if I wanted to free myself [from my abusive relationship with my husband] […] that I should get with him [the commander] and that he [my husband] would respect him [the commander]. (14 June 2022)

Isabela’s reflections about her conversation with her friend reveal the calculated nature of her relationship with the commander. They show that her actions were planned as a means to seek protection. When I asked Isabela why she went to the paramilitary commander instead of the police, she said the police were absent from the area and would not have helped. This was, therefore, her own way of protecting herself and her daughters in her precarious situation.

Like Lucia above, Isabela was also able to influence her commander partner’s behaviour to protect community members during the three months they were together in 2012:

I would talk to him a lot. I would tell him to let people talk to him, to let community members talk to him and to listen to people. And not to be so tough… For example, when people [in the community] did something bad the first thing they [the paramilitaries] would do was kill them. And I would try and tell him to look into things first … because someone can [falsely] say ‘Hey, that person raped me’ or something like that. There are people like that …. And they would just go and kill them without investigating … (14 June 2022)

Isabela said she began to notice changes in his behaviour, and proceeded to give a very specific example of another behavioural change that she encouraged in order to protect community members:

Isabela: When they [the paramilitaries] would show up at a party, they would pull out their guns and shoot [into the air]. I told him that this was bad because one of those bullets could hit an innocent person. So he prohibited people [the other armed actors below him] from going out with their guns to drink [alcohol].

KS: And he listened to you?

Isabela: Yes. Even though he was the one who commanded everyone else, he would let me talk to him. He would listen to what I told him. (14 June 2022)

Isabela’s case shows that she recognised the armed actor as the provider of security from domestic abuse, and that she chose this option instead of going to local police or any other state entities. She recognised the authority of the commander. Her abusive partner also recognised the commander’s authority as the leader of the group and stopped abusing her. In this way, one could argue that the commander became a substitute for the state in protecting her from domestic violence. Although there is existing research on women’s responses to intimate partner violence (Anderson and Saunders 2003; Goodman et al. 2003; Ulrich 1991), it does not look at armed conflict contexts or other situations in which pursuing or acceding to an intimate relationship with another more powerful person can be a strategy to escape intimate partner violence. Second, Isabela describes the performative physicality she engaged in, such as hugging the commander and being affectionate in public. And, finally, Isabela’s case illustrates how she was able to limit the potential for local violence by making recommendations to the commander in private. Isabela convinced her commander partner to order his subordinates to stop shooting their guns into the air when showing up at a party. Although seemingly small, this is nonetheless evidence that governance in war spaces is an ‘interactive process’ (Mampilly 2011) between armed actors and civilians.

Another case – that of Elena – is similar to Isabela’s, in that she also used strategic intimacy to seek protection from domestic abuse. Elena told me that in the 1980s, she was living in Arauca and was in a relationship with the commander of another guerrilla group – the National Liberation Army (ELN). Although the ELN commander was in his forties and she was 19, he represented an escape for her even though she simultaneously feared him and armed actors more generally. When I asked her how the relationship began, and if she did anything to convince him of her affection, Elena told me that he was very interested in her and she strategically followed his lead (16 June 2022). She explained that she did this ‘so he was interested in me – in helping me’ (16 June 2022). Elena told me she did not like pretending, but that she desperately needed protection, and he helped her to ‘free herself’ of her abusive situation (16 June 2022). I asked Elena if the state was present in the area where she lived, she said that ‘they [the ELN] were the ones who were around at that time’ (19 April 2023). As above, this reveals that an armed group had more of a presence than the Colombian state in the territory where the events described occurred.

Elena also shared that despite her lack of attraction, her proximity to the commander was useful because she could also exert pressure on him to protect community members from harm. While she was in a relationship with the ELN commander, she says two boys were caught stealing a cow and the commander and his subordinates were considering killing them. She convinced him not to do this:

Elena: I told him, ‘No, no, no. Don’t do it, and if you do […] Don’t tell me anything. I’ll leave; I’ll leave for good […] So [instead] he went and tied them up [the boys] and made them confess and explain how they had done it [taken the cattle]. (16 June 2022)

From her limited position of power as his partner, Elena was able to convince the commander not to kill the boys who had taken the cattle. When I asked her why, she explained: ‘I saw it as unjust to kill a person as punishment’. Interestingly, she did so by telling her commander partner that he would risk losing her unless he listened to her. She repeatedly mentioned that the boys had a mother in a wheelchair and an alcoholic father. In other words, she analysed the situation and took multiple circumstances into account when she decided to pressure her commander partner to change his behaviour.

Elena’s story underscores several key facets of strategic intimacy. Firstly, she said she made an effort to perform in a convincing manner while in a relationship with an ELN commander. She showed interest in him by responding to his advances, performing by following his lead. In response, the commander protected her from domestic violence, much like in the case of Isabela above. Elena’s story also reveals her ability to pressure the commander from her social positioning within the relationship. By telling him that she would leave him, she used their relationship as a negotiating tool to get him to listen to her. She was able to exert influence on his behaviour, and was crucial in preventing the deaths of the boys who stole the cattle. As in the cases discussed above, this reveals that local armed actors may not have complete autonomy in how they exert the power they have in the war zones they control (Arjona 2016; Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly 2015). Finally, in Elena’s case, state protective institutions were absent, and the ELN had control of the area in Arauca where she was living at the time.

By engaging in strategic intimacy, the three women above recognised that they were facing patriarchal conditions that, although oppressive, also presented them with restricted opportunities to act. Leveraging those, they resorted to strategic performances of intimacy as one of the limited forms of agency that were available to them as a means to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. Their cases also reveal the tactics they used, specifically the strategic performance of emotions and the strategic use of physicality.

Strategic intimacy to gather information

Fernanda grew up in a small town in Santander. Her brother was kidnapped in 1990, and although her family reported the crime to a state entity, they never received news about his whereabouts. Frustrated but determined to continue to look for her brother, Fernanda eventually took things into her own hands. Paramilitaries controlled her town from the late 1980s until their demobilisation in 2005. Fernanda shared that she met many paramilitary actors because her father was the only mechanic in town, and they often went by his shop to get their cars fixed. There, she formed a relationship with a local commander. When I asked her why she was in that relationship, she responded: ‘More than anything else, I wanted to know if it was the guerrilla [forces] that had taken my brother or if they themselves [the paramilitaries] had done something to him’ (Interview, 23 October 2021).

She said that she thought getting together with the paramilitary man might work, ‘because through those people [armed groups], one heard things’ (23 October 2021). To maintain the relationship, Fernanda narrates what it was like to perform feelings while she was dating the paramilitary commander:

It feels strange, because it’s not like one feels attracted towards that person or anything like that, but I would pretend that I did.

I acted naturally, as if I really loved him. He would tell me let’s go together to such and such a place – I would go, but I didn’t go with the mentality of wanting to be with him. No, I went with the mentality of trying to figure out what happened to my brother. (23 October 2021)

Above, Fernanda reflects on her experience and says she pretended to be attracted to the commander and she acted as if she really loved him. To show this, she engaged in both the strategic display of emotions and strategic use of her body. She went with him where he told her to go, and also said it was important to ‘stay on top of his needs’ (24 October 2022). When I asked Fernanda what she meant, she listed several behaviours: having a sexual relationship and other physical interactions (kissing him), and taking care of his clothes and his other personal things (24 October 2022). Her strategy was successful: the paramilitary commander did investigate for her, and told her that her brother and two other boys had been taken by the ELN guerrilla. Although sending him off to do this investigative work may seem like a small act, Fernanda shaped the paramilitary’s actions and encouraged him to behave in a way he otherwise would not have. Sadly, the paramilitary commander was never actually able to locate her brother, who remains missing to this day.

Despite ultimately being unsuccessful in her goal, Fernanda’s case serves to underscore several elements and patterns identified in the argument section above. First, Fernanda commented that going to a state entity did not help her to resolve or determine her brother’s whereabouts. Second, she underscored the physical behaviours she engaged in with the paramilitary commander in order to put on a convincing performance as his girlfriend. She also showed other emotional expressions, such as worry when he did not come back on time. By demonstrating agency in the form of strategic intimacy in this situation, Fernanda shifted the armed actor’s behaviour and encouraged him to do something he would not have otherwise done. Even today, she said that the only information she has about her brother is what she learned from the paramilitary commander. The fact that even after all this time this is still the only piece of information Fernanda has reveals that strategic intimacy is sometimes the only option for some women to achieve their goals.

Clara’s case offers a different angle on this behaviour. She was living in a small community in Vaupés, which was a FARC stronghold in the 1990s and 2000s. Clara is now 35 years old, but she was recruited to the FARC when she was 12. She left the guerrilla after 15 days, and was able to do so after the intervention of her school teachers, who went to the local commander. The commander allowed her to return to school, but Clara notes that he became romantically interested in her while she was in the ranks. When Clara left the FARC and started dating a local boy, she says the commander was not pleased: ‘He didn’t like that – he didn’t like that I was dating someone else and he took advantage of the opportunity and they killed the boy’ (6 January 2022). She immediately tried to find out who was responsible, as it was not initially evident who had killed her boyfriend.

Clara first tried to gathering information through her friends, but was unsuccessful. She said it would have been useless to go to the police because all policemen were suspicious of the locals and assumed they were all linked to the FARC.⁴ Living in a ‘red zone’, she says ‘the police never inspired confidence in us. What’s more, we were afraid if they showed up. […] it was never a public force that protected anyone’. Given this, she resorted to what she deemed the best option at the time. She began a strategic relationship with a 35-year-old man who was a member of the FARC’s civilian support network:

I met a man who was a militiaman and [through him] I began to investigate everything that had happened [regarding the murder] […] I got close to this man and I began to go out and talk to him and connect with him. Little by little, I was able to discover many things [about the murder]. (6 January 2022)

Like the other women discussed above, Clara explained that she had to falsely perform her feelings to her partner. In addition to showing outward expression of worry for him, she also commented that she had to learn new skillsets, such as cooking and socialising with people who came to speak to him:

It was very difficult because when you have an objective, you have to go for it; you have to do everything possible so that things turn out. I tried to be a good woman, I tried to be on top of the things he needed. I learned to do a lot of things, and he taught me a lot of things. (6 January 2022)

Clara remained in this relationship for a total of three years. During this time, she learned all the details about the murder, including that her militia boyfriend had participated in it. She was also able to acquire extensive information about the FARC’s past and present operations in the area. Clara eventually revealed her militia partner’s location and that of the local FARC guerrillas to the Colombian army, and he was killed because he refused to turn himself in peacefully.

In Clara’s case, there is some overlap with the women introduced above who sought out relationships for protection. Like them, Clara also began to use her inside position to encourage her partner to protect others from harm. For instance, she once overheard the militiaman and others linked to the FARC talking and learned they had plans to kill a man they accused of being a snitch. She told her militia partner in private afterwards that this wasn’t right, that the man had a wife and children:

I heard the conversation, so I told him, privately, I don’t agree with that. […] It wasn’t right. I think he felt bad about the comment I made […] he warned him [the man] to be very careful and he [the man] managed to escape by a backpath. (6 January 2022)

In this way, Clara swayed her partner and was able to save a person who would otherwise have been killed. She said she also tried to help people on her own if she overheard that armed groups were going to harm community members:

Sometimes I would find out that they were going to hurt someone. I always tried to inform that person about it and get them to go away from there. I was always, well, the truth is, taking risks, but helping people. (6 January 2022)

Clara’s case highlights that the problematic state presence was one of the reasons why she decided to take things into her own hands and seek information about her murdered boyfriend using strategic intimacy. Locals were deemed by the authorities to be suspicious in terms of potential involvement with the FARC, and this meant that they could not count on state or local police forces to resolve problems. Second, Clara’s case is an example of the strategic performance of emotions – she said she would act as though she were concerned about the militiaman as an expression of intimacy. She also shared that she learned other skills to provide for his needs, such as how to cook meals for him. Finally, her case is an example of modifying some elements of governance at the micro level via strategic intimacy, because from her position as the militiaman’s partner, she was able to help protect locals. Again, we see that a gendered form of micro-governance can be achieved via intimacy.

Conclusions

Understanding the logic of strategic intimacy offers deeper insight into civilian women’s experiences of war and conflict. Civilian women live wars differently than civilian men – in terms of the types of violence they suffer, the burdens they carry, and the ways that they respond to their violent surroundings (Cockburn 2001). However, their experiences are often overlooked in wartime protection efforts or post-war reconstruction plans, leaving them in vulnerable positions.

This vulnerability is heightened in the case of women who used strategic intimacy with armed actors. Because of their closeness to dangerous combatants, they risked becoming targets themselves. Numerous community members who observed these relationships from a distance told me in interviews how dangerous they were, particularly when armed groups battled for territory and a new armed group won. The ex-girlfriends of the previous armed actors were often the first to be targeted with retributive violence, as the assumption was that they could not be trusted by the new dominant actors. These insights have been confirmed elsewhere, including by sources in the Truth Commission:

There was a girl who was the girlfriend or woman of a commander [of the FARC-EP] and that they tied her up in the middle of the plaza, naked, and they [the invading paramilitaries] cut off her breasts to spread terror in the region. (Comisión de la Verdad 2022c, 153)

Although my interviewees did not face such violence and lived to share their experiences, such accounts underscore the high-risk nature of strategic intimacy.

Despite the dangers, the cases of some of the women discussed above reveal that sometimes civilian women were in relationships not because they loved their combatant partners, or because they were plotting against the ‘other side’, but because they saw such relationships as their only option to protect themselves (and their communities) in the context of an absent state. Some of the women initiated and/or consigned themselves to relationships with armed actors because these came with protection benefits for themselves and others. Others said they did so to acquire information. In all cases, the women engaged in acting (Hochschild 1983) and performances (Goffman 1956) that were strategic in nature to achieve these broader objectives. Such behaviour is consistent with Wolf and Zuckerman’s (2012) concept of ‘deviant heroes’ – those individuals who go against the grain of societal norms and laws and are often capable of using this unique position to bring about positive social change. Through nonconformist social behaviours that society might label as ‘deviant’, people can actually ‘increase justice or decrease suffering, often at great risk to themselves’ (Wolf and Zuckerman 2012, 639).

In addition to achieving their primary objectives, several of the cases above also reveal that civilian women intervened in, and in some instances were able to actually shift, armed actor governance in small but significant ways. Rebel governance scholars note that ‘at first blush predatory rebels would appear to respond solely to endogenous incentives – material opportunities produced by the breakdown of political order’ (41). But the reality is that civilians can often have an effect on and alter how armed actors govern them: ‘Civilians have their own interests and, although usually unarmed, often have unexpected influence over how they are governed’ (Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly 2015, 1). Although scholars have looked at how alliances between rebels and societal movements can alter broad rebel governance patterns,⁵ this article uniquely shows how individual alliances via intimacy can lead to smaller changes in local governance. More specifically, civilian women engaging in strategic intimacy gained knowledge about violence or extortion that the armed groups were going to carry out in their communities. Subsequently, they were able to suggest to their combatant partners that they change their behaviour and protect other civilians in ways that the armed actors did not initially intend. Their successful interventions can be considered a form of gendered micro-governance.

Finally, the women’s strategies illustrated in this article speak directly to academic work on gendered civilian agency, a body of literature that emphasises that women in conflict zones are actively engaged individuals and not powerless victims (Hume and Wilding 2020; Stallone 2022; Zulver 2022). In the absence of the Colombian state or its failure to respond to their needs for other reasons, some women civilians strategically developed relationships with armed actors to achieve both individual and community-level protection objectives. As this article shows, women can also become strategic actors in intimate relationships that had a utilitarian purpose. There is no doubt that these civilian women were subject to distinct types of victimisation, both within and outside of their strategic relationships. Nonetheless, one of this article’s contributions is to point to a constrained degree of agency within that victimisation. Put differently, this focus on women’s constrained acts of agency is, as Butler (2004, 8) might note, ‘guided by the question of what maximizes the possibilities for a livable life, what minimizes the possibility of an unbearable life, or, indeed, social or literal death’.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Ana Arjona, Robert Braun, Carolina Casas, Laura Enriquez, Sarah Moore, Leigh Payne, Sam Ritholtz, Manuela Sáenz, Leslie Salzinger, Tatiana Sanchez Parra, Sanne Weber, and Julia Zulver.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of California, Berkeley.

Notes on contributors

Kiran Stallone

Kiran Stallone holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MSc in Latin American studies from the University of Oxford. She analyses gender and civilian agency in war and conflict, with a focus on Colombia. Through her work, she contributes to peacebuilding and conflict resolution efforts by providing insights and recommendations that address the complexities of armed conflict violence. She has led research and data collection projects in 10 different Colombian departments, and has engaged with countless communities affected by war and conflict. In addition to her academic research, she also regularly serves as a consultant on gender and development projects.

Notes

1 To protect the identities of the people I interviewed for this article, all names used are pseudonyms.

2 Despite critiques that Goffman did ‘little to challenge outlandish and repressive behavior toward women’ (Deegan 2014), many gender and feminist scholars have also recognised his contributions to feminist theory (Deegan 2014; West 1996). For example, West (1996) notes that Goffman paved the way for studies of the ‘personal’ realm, which led to many important insights about women’s repression.

3 When dating the FARC commander, Lucia shared that she identified as a lesbian. Today, Lucia identifies as a trans man and uses he/him pronouns. In providing an historical account of his decisions, I use she/her pronouns to reflect the gender dynamics of the time period when these events occurred.

4 This was not necessarily a misguided assumption. The FARC had broad support in many communities across Colombia, and civilians collaborated with the organisation.

5 See Barter’s (2015) work on alliances between the Free Aceh Movement and activist groups in Indonesia.