Every Man in This Village: the causes and the people by Dr Jennifer Minter
In her collection of articles, Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times war correspondent, documents her outsider’s perspective on the conflict in the Middle East during which both America and Australia have participated, militarily. These articles vary in complexity and reveal a crucible of conflict-related issues and problems that shed some interesting light on our conflict prompt.
Clash of ideology and sectarian differences
The causes of conflict may be ideological. They may arise because of a difference in views and values, or in the case of the Sunnis and Shi’as which is the largest and oldest split in the history of Islam, because of religious differences relating to leadership succession. Whilst they both agree on the fundamentals of Islam and in the Prophet Muhammad, the Shi’as believe that Ali was the appointed successor.
Sunni means ‘one who follows the Sunnah’ (what the Prophet said, did, agreed to or condemned). Shi’a is a contraction of the phrase ‘Shiat Ali’, meaning ‘partisans of Ali’. In Iraq, Stack draws attention to the 1991 slaughter of Shi’ites at Karbala, an ancient pilgrimage site.
Consequences of conflict: the Shiite history is one of sacrifice and martyrdom: The Shiites pay homage to Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who died on the plains of Karbala in AD 680. Ever since his death, Hussein’s tomb has been the site of an important pilgrimage.
Stack notes that in 1991, the first Bush administration urged Iraqis to rise up against their government. The Kurds and the Shiites responded, expecting support from America, but they were betrayed. Saddam sent the army to slaughter rebels hidden in the shrine at Karbala. As Stack notes, even now many Shiites believed they were killed – not by Saddam – but by America. (71) In Iraq, “there is no past or present, there is only everything, and it weaves together” (71)
America comes “lofty and unscathed, cloaked in the power to spin dreams of freedom and break hearts.” (72) If America betrayed the Shiites, Iran provided help and support and absorbed the refugees. They won their right to influence. The Shiites distrusted the Americans; they “owed the Americans nothing”. Fast-forward to January 2016, and Waleed Aly now says that the largely Sunni citizens in Mosul (the second biggest city in Iraq) fear and distrust the Americans more than they fear the Islamic State. “Of those who would prefer IS to say in Mosul (39%), only a third actually support them. The rest simply distrust the US, the Iraq government or Kurdish militias too much. More people now regard US air strikes as the biggest threat to their family’s security.” (Islamic State is a lesser evil for Many in Mosul, The Age 22/1/16)
Hussein Safar was shot in the mass grave, but scrambled alive. Rounded up with Shiites from the village, he toppled into the pit nursing his bullet wound but did not die. Miraculously, he escaped. Ironically, he was killed in 2005 when he was called on to testify about the mass grave before the Supreme Court committee investigating the crimes of Saddam’s regime. (76). Corporate America and its corporate war.
Hence we find another very important ideological point of difference. Iraq citizens are divided between those who support and those who do not support the American-led war against terror. Journalists and translators risked their lives every day working for the Americans. (199) As the journalist Hattab notes, the civil war demands sacrifice and courage. “If we are defeated, and we consider ourselves the educated segment of this country, what will the people in the street do?” (200)
In Chapter 6, “The Living Martyr”, Stack investigates the causes of conflict; the martyrs; the misunderstandings; the hopes and betrayals; the ironies; the injustice and the different perceptions of conflict and strife
(How individuals cope with conflict: following one’s conscience): Raheem’s story is typical of the Shiites under the reign of Saddam Hussein. He refused to join the Baath party, so was denied a career as a teacher in the army. Baathists were rushed through the army. “It was a compromise his conscience would not let him make.” (67). He went to Yemen, then Libya, working as a teacher sending money home to support his family, whom he saw every eleven months. “Like most Iraqis, he did what he had to do”. (Compare the American’s attitude to Iraq and war , 67).
Consequences of conflict: the sad survivors: Likewise, at Karbala, a 60-year old woman clutches the photograph of her daughter, a university student who was executed by Saddam Hussein’s government in 1982; she was whisked away while paying homage to Imam Hussein. (65) She died defending her religious beliefs; defending her right to worship their own successor to the Prophet, which contradicted Sunni beliefs. The 60-year-old woman mourned the loss of her daughter in silence for 20 years. (65) This woman, says Megan, is typical of every family who nurses scars and secret graves.
Hussein Safar was shot in the mass grave, but scrambled alive. Rounded up with Shiites from the village, he toppled into the pit nursing his bullet wound but did not die. Miraculously, he escaped. Ironically, he was killed in 2005 when he was called on to testify about the mass grave before the Supreme Court Committee investigating the crimes of Saddam’s regime. (76).
“Beneath his (Imam Hussein’s) overarching martyrdom, all the other martyrs took their place.” (66) Causes of conflict: In 1991, the first Bush administration urged Iraqis to rise up against the government of Saddam Hussein. The Kurds and the Shiites responded, expecting support from America, but they believed that they were betrayed. Saddam sent the army to slaughter rebels hidden in the shrine at Karbala. Even now many Shiites believed they were killed – not by Saddam but by America. (71) In Iraq, “there is no past or present, there is only everything, and it weaves together” (71).
Violence and sacrifice: martyrs and victims
“Violence is a reprint of itself, an endless copy. I mean to say that by itself, violence is not the point.” (96) (conflict perpetuates conflict; one conflict is the seed of another; one could also apply this quote to the footprints of conflict as they traverse the bloody Middle East leaving a trail of waste).
Blood and sacrifice Eid-al-Adha is the story of Ibrahim, father to Ishmael (103), who is ordered by God to slaughter his son, which he duly sets out to do, (with the son’s knowledge and stoic attitude) but is stopped by God at the 11th hour. (Unlike the Koranic Ishmael, the Isaac in the Old Testament does not know he is about to die.) Stack regards this story as an interesting parable to modern day civil war. Violence is fuelled by blind faith in God – those who do not argue or question as their greatest virtue; they are attuned to the “ring of God’s voice”. “Blind faith is the footbridge that takes us from virtuous religion to self-righteous violence.” That day was the crystallisation, a celebration of capricious mercy and murder in the name of faith.” (103)
Ahmed Shawkat, a journalist and a Shabak Kurd who ran a newspaper and wrote a book on Mosul’s founding (Kurds are an ethnic and cultural minority). He had death threats and was one day shot while on the roof using his satellite phone. Ahmed Younis Muhammed stands at the grave of his oldest brother who was killed during the Iran-Iraq war. They have been suffering ever since. They aren’t able to sacrifice the typical animal during the Ead feast. “We don’t have anything to sacrifice. We have sacrificed enough. We’ve spent our lives sacrificing. All we do in this country is sacrifice.” (105)
The worst job in Iraq is a police officer; they are “marked men, working for the occupation”, trying to eke out a living. (101) Megan’s response when she visits the victims in hospital: she nearly faints. The stress is intolerable. “My body was shutting down in protest at the parade of broken humans. (102) As Raheem states, though, “you have to be strong. We see this every day.”
Ahmed Younis Muhammed stands at the grave of his oldest brother who was killed during the Iran-Iraq war. They have been suffering ever since. They aren’t able to sacrifice the typical animal during the Eid-al-Adha feast. “We don’t have anything to sacrifice. We have sacrificed enough. We’ve spent our lives sacrificing. All we do in this country is sacrifice.” (105) The man cuts the throat of the cow and the children watch. The cow did not “die quickly”. It died in agony. (105) The blood “swallowing everything. Finally I gave up and knew it would stain me, too” (105)
Two suicide bombers blow themselves up at the same minute in the headquarters of the two rival political parties. (106) (as the Kurdish Democratic Party/ Patriotic Union of Kurdistan)
Stack notes: “Animal blood in the morning and human blood by nightfall (107) The blood kept flowing until it covered everything.
Fear, horror and survival Ahmed was a 23 year old Shiite living in the urban killing fields of Baghdad’s Hay al-Amal neighbourhood. He trained in the gym at university; he ran half marathons. He was too poor to study. He meets Megan at the hotel to tell his story, but in doing so, he becomes a marked man. He discusses the fear that seeps into families; that creates problems between father and son. The father was a marked man; He shot a “Tikrit Guy” (a man from Saddam’s hometown and tribe; the grudge never faded, “grudges were a national sport”, and Ahmed’s father was often arrested, (207) tortured, imprisoned. He was angry if he ever suspected his son of talking to an American – that was also a death sentence. His father came home from work and screamed at him for making too much noise. They fought “epic battles” about the generator; about the debt; it was difficult to make a living. (the father did not want Ahmed to leave the house: stories about young adults shot dead, suspected of talking to Americans, p. 210.)
In the neighbourhood, “one lives in fear of another, because we don’t know who anybody is.” Ahmed would like to escape, but he has nowhere to go. His family relies on him, although he only earns a paltry wage from the pharmacy.
The consequences of conflict and the seeds of another: The tragedy of the new regime was that they did not dispense with the intelligence traitors. “The Americans left those who tortured and those who wrote accusations”. The power of Saddam Hussein’s government lay in the public security officers and the intelligence people who were still roaming free, shooting those who sought to tell their stories, like Safar. (77).
Ideological differences: “democracy” versus totalitarianism
In Chapter 13: “The earthquake everybody felt” Megan Stack, Los Angeles Times war correspondent documents the consequences of factional and sectarian differences when both sides fight to the death; and when both sides manipulate the political processes.
Currently, in Egypt, the Egyptian military dictatorship continues to consolidate its rule by isolating all opposition, particularly that of the “democratically” elected government of Mohammed Mursi who was deposed in September 2013. Three secular leaders (Ahmed Maher, Mohamed Adel and Ahmed Douma) were jailed in December 2013 under Egypt’s new anti-protest laws. The Government is restricting freedom of assembly under its restrictive demonstrations law and is systematically arresting opposition figures, human rights activists and peaceful demonstrators as it pursues its so-called “road map” to democracy.
Peter Greste, the Australian journalist, was arrested in Egypt and labelled a Muslim brotherhood spy. He and two other journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, but for (Western department), had a small office in Egypt and were charged with espionage. In addition, the government has also had a blacklist of 20 journalists, many of whom have fled the country.
Stack’s point is that America preaches values of democracy, freedom of expression, human rights, equality, but often in the Middle East these values get lost. These values often do not suit their political agenda especially when it concerns keeping peace with Israel.
Although they prop up the Egyptians, paying billions of dollars for a “frosty” peace with Israel, the Americans stand by and watch the corruption of democracy. (184) US officials stayed “mostly silent in the face of torture and arrest and misery” of soldiers beating people bloody to keep them from voting etc. necktie-clad Americans at the embassy in Cairo; my own government lurked in the background propping up this machine of greasy, perverted men, not seeing this because it was convenient not to see.” (the tear gas canisters used by the government in the demonstrations were “Made in the USA”.
Stack details a typical election process between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Gamal Heshmat and Moustafa Fiqi (Egyptian diplomat/Government sponsored representative/army/US) in Damanhour, which is traditionally a bulwark of grassroots support for the Muslim Brotherhood. As she mentioned, the Egyptians are religious because it is just about the only thing they have to bequeath (179)
The ballot is corrupted: soldiers guard the voting booths deterring people from voting. – “sealed off schools where people were supposed to vote” . The crowd attacked one of the officials, ripped the sack from his arms, and 100,000s of blank ballots drifted in the wind (186). They hope somewhere, someone is watching but don’t know “that this story has been written before, over and over again and still the status quo sits stolid.” 187
Gemat had been ahead; the judge was to take over the counting of the ballot and Fiqi won “by a landslide”. Later 2 “big guys” had been arrested from the Brotherhood office. Fiqi became head of the foreign affairs committee.
The hand of the dictator reaches ominously into Egyptian society; it still has the closest thing to a modern gulag (184); the security officers reach into every sphere of life; they “smash the demonstrators” limbs with clubs, kick their ribs, and haul them off to prison for genital electrification and sodomy” 177. As Stack notes, the Brotherhood are powerful because “repressive rulers have shut down every single public platform except the mosque” (179)
(The reference to the gulag, shows her criticism of the US that remains silent. “U.S. officials stayed mostly silent in the face of torture and arrest and misery” (184)… Soldiers were beating people bloody to keep them from voting; four-course lunches with necktie-clad America ns at the embassy in Cairo; my own government lurked in the background, propping up this machine of greasy, perverted men, not seeing this because it was convenient not to see”. (184)
Previously Heshmat ran as an independent and once in Parliament agitated about corruption. He was kicked out of parliament and spent 6 months in jail. In his hometown, riots erupted and people were jailed. “Bitterness festered.” (181)
During a typical demonstration, the anger seethes “of all the fights with the henchmen of Mubarak’s ruling party.” The Bush administration did not like the spread of “democracy”; Hamas, Brotherhood and Hezbollah were all cashing in. The debate about democracy was stifled. For the Americans, “it didn’t look the way they had expected.”
Megan Stack also deftly analyses in her accounts of the Middle East wars, that the hypocritical self-serving agendas pursued by Western governments frequently inflames rather than solves the conflict. America comes “lofty and unscathed, cloaked in the power to spin dreams of freedom and break hearts.” (72) If America betrayed the Shiites, Iran provided help and support and absorbed the refugees. They won their right to influence. The Shiites distrusted the Americans; they “owed the Americans nothing”.
Although the United States props up the Egyptians, paying billions of dollars for a “frosty” peace with Israel, the Americans stand by and watch the corruption of democracy. (184) US officials stayed “mostly silent in the face of torture and arrest and misery” of soldiers beating people bloody to keep them from voting for the Muslim Brotherhood during the “democratic” elections.
Likewise many political commentators also point out that the West hypocritically overlooks the barbaric actions of the Saudi Arabian government whilst bombing the Islamic State for the same time of barbarity. Both groups are guilty of killing homosexuals, stoning adulterers, and chopping off the hand or foot of a thief. Just take the case of the Burmese woman, Laila bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, who was dragged through the streets and held down by four policemen, while it took three blows from the executioner’s sword to sever her head. As he hacked away, she used her last breath to scream: “I didn’t kill. I didn’t kill”.
As Paul McGeough asks (22/1/15), “How strange it is then, that we’re at war with IS, but the Saudis are our allies . . . Where is the crusading Tony Abbott when he’s needed?”
And of course, how can one legitimately and decisively solve conflict with such lopsided and selective principles? As Megan Stack points out, it is impossible.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi echoes her views. He has been locked up without trial in Guantanamo Prison for more than 13 years. As he states, depriving prisoners of due process, humane treatment and fair trials only deepens their conviction and that of their countrymen that Western claims to global leadership in human rights and the rule of law are false and hypocritical.
Working for a just cause and a just outcome
It takes courage and foresight, tolerance and dedication to withstand intimidation and brutality and to seek to transcend differences. Often, those who tried during the Iraqi civil war were inevitably shot. Whilst reporting on the civil war which claimed her life, Atwar Bahjat, a journalist at Al-Jazeera, openly espoused the belief that it was possible to overcome sectarian differences and achieve unity for the common good. Her gold “famous” pendant swinging on her “warm chest” symbolised the dream and possibility of unity; it symbolised her refusal to split people into categories and typecast them according to sect; she believed that, as a journalist, it was immoral and discriminatory, to identify people as Sunni or Shiite because it perpetuated the differences between them that stimulated hatred. As Megan Stack writes, Atwar was a “theological half-breed” who “didn’t fit anywhere” and “told people she didn’t believe in sect. Her country kept on breaking down and Atwar kept on refusing to acknowledge it.”
Everyone is scarred as are most of the people she interviews and the people she works with.
We know that many of the policemen and the translators and the media personnel who work with or beside the Americans are marked people. They become targets of the militias. As Stack comments, the worst job in Iraq is a police officer; they are “marked men, working for the occupation”, trying to eke out a living. (101)
Such wars are also littered with examples of those who do not survive – especially not physically. For example, Ahmed Shawkat, a journalist and a Shabak Kurd who ran a newspaper and wrote a book on Mosul’s founding (Kurds are an ethnic and cultural minority). He had death threats and was one day shot while on the roof using his satellite phone.
There are no survivors in war:
The plight of Uncle John foreshadows Megan Stack’s eventual trauma: In the Prologue to her collection of essays, “Every Man in this Village is a Liar”, Megan Stack draws attention to her Uncle John’s war experiences in Beirut. He survived the war, but did not survive the battle. When the bomb in Beirut exploded, 305 people died around him, but John made it back to New York, but few years later shot himself in the head and Megan attended the funeral. This was her first exposure to the battle scars of war which become a predominant theme throughout her journalistic experiences in the war conflicts in the Middle East. She illustrates just how difficult it is to survive the war and often the psychological battles become more horrendous even than the physical. Likewise, Megan survives numerous wars as a correspondent, but it takes its toll.
Although Megan is able to dodge the bullets driving through a battle-scarred Lebanon at the height of sectarian violence, Megan eventually becomes anxious and stressed. There were signs all along. In 2004, at the height of anti-American sentiment during the Iraq war, Megan cannot stop fainting when she visits the victims in a hospital outside Baghdad after a suicide bomb. She admits the stress was intolerable. “My body was shutting down in protest at the parade of broken humans. (102) Raheem reminds her of the need to be “strong” (“We see this every day.”) but Megan admits that it was not the first time she had started fainting, and “it would keep happening for months to come”. After 10 years in the field as a war correspondent, Megan realises personally that you can survive and not survive. She has survived physically and enjoys the clean sheets and distance from the danger, but she knows that she will always be emotionally involved and psychological scarred by the violence.
For this reason, Stack suggests that there is no end in sight; the conflict spirals endlessly and it is almost impossible to find common ground. The various groups have sacrificed too much. Sometimes the conflict reaches saturation and in these circumstances groups with entrenched cultural and religious differences fail to find common ground. Often, the sacrifices are born disproportionately by sections of the community.
Conflict breeds violence and arrogance: power and influence: Hussein versus Hussein
In 1991 when the dictator, Saddam Hussein, sent the army to slaughter rebels hidden in the shrine at Karbala he told his advisers, “We’re both named Hussein. Let’s see who’s stronger”.
Stack states that America comes “lofty and unscathed, cloaked in the power to spin dreams of freedom and break hearts.” (72) If America betrayed the Shiites, Iran provided help and support and absorbed the refugees. They won their right to influence. The Shiites distrusted the Americans; they “owed the Americans nothing”.
Symbols: Stack uses an analogy of the frog to show how the oppressed learn to cope with hostility in Iraq: (211) Stack explains that if you put a frog in boiling water it will die immediately. But if you raise the temperature gradually the frog will adapt. The insinuation is that the Iraqis have adapted gradually to the horror of civil war and the horror of the constant fear of death.
More than a whiff of Napoleon
The two infamous leaders, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Moammar Qaddafi of Libya, were known in the West as “madmen” – their brutality and attitude to power echoing the infamous Napoleon in Orwell’s Animal Farm. As Stack points out, they were both moulded by the pan-Arab philosophies of Nasser, by global Cold War chess games and the Arabs’ morale-shattering military losses to Israel. They were “cruel, ruthless men, wily manipulators who kept their power no matter how many of their own people had to be killed, tortured or terrified.” Both of these two leaders refused to be dictated to by a global superpower. (80) From one “rogue dictatorship smashed” to one still “preserved under glass”.
Whilst a Libyan Intelligence Agent was arrested in 2001 for the “Lockerbie” disaster, Qaddafi himself accepted responsibility in 2003. On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was hijacked. Up to 243 passengers were killed as the plane disintegrated onto land in the Lockerbie region, Scotland. The plane was travelling from Frankfurt to Detroit.
The Libyan Government was subsequently able to buy its way back into favour by compensating for the deaths of the plane victims giving way to what Stack calls an “image rehabilitation”. (84). Stack ridicules both Qaddafi’s opportunistic stance and the American Government’s hypocritical attitudes. After the various state-sanctioned terrorist acts committed by Qaddafi, and after the demise of Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi believed that the country would just “buy its way back into good standing”. The United States condoned its terrible human rights record because it submitted to the might of the global superpower. Qaddafi “liquidated enemies and slaughtered political prisoners” (82). He was a megalomaniac who cultivated the myth of self. Stack mocks the Leader’s desires and whims that fashion the country’s moods.
A great deal of cynicism surrounds the treatment of both Iraq and Libya. Experts like Miloud Mehadbi (the Director of Foreign Relations at the World Centre for Studies and Researches of the Green Book) believed that all the war proved was that “there is no democracy, no international law, no human rights.” Selfishness wins the day, (83), as Gaddafi becomes a “good example”, thus exposing America’s double standards in its bid to spread “democracy” (93) U.S. oil firms were “drooling to get back into Libyan fields, and had promised to convince Congress to vote in Libya’s favour.” The Libyans were of the view that “the Americans do what they don’t say and they don’t say what they do”. (83)
Stack focuses on the palpable fear experienced by those living in a dictatorship. Social interaction was all “nervous smiles, evasive answers and cups of tea”. Nobody wanted to talk about the Leader. People were anxious and forever careful. There were stories of mass executions, corruption and torture but no one ever talked about them.
The Libyan government blamed its problems on Israeli conspiracies, Mossad agents and the West. (88). One could never evade the notice or attention of the government; its eyes were everywhere. As soon as the doctor’s car coughed in the traffic the government officials were able to whisk Megan to the airport. Inevitably, “you can’t do anything in a dictatorship. You construct little facades of freedom, but that’s just a child’s game of pretend.” One is always being watched and judged. (91)
Gaddafi’s son, Saif al Islam, gave a speech at the World Economic Forum. Although he was westernised he referred to father as “the leader”.
As Naomi Klein asserts in Shock Doctrine, the American Government’s anti-Marshall Plan formed the basis of the war against Iraq in 2002, and the theme of the conquest was the rise of corporate America. Like all conquest stories, it was based on the unquestioned assumptions about U.S. superiority and Iraqi inferiority. She says, “The US federal government contracts commissioned a kind of country-in-a-box, designed in Virginia and Texas, to be assembled in Iraq.” The occupation authorities repeatedly said, “It was a “gift from the people of the United States to the people of Iraq”. All Iraqis needed to do was to “unwrap it”.
However, in the unwrapping process, foreign labourers employed by the major U.S. contractors were used. Iraqi workers were cast in the role of “awed spectators”. Klein concludes that just about all key Iraqi governmental functions in Iraq were handed over to U.S. private contractors and Iraqis themselves were excluded from the gold rush.
Palestine and the intifada
The first intifada was waged in 1993. Swelling into a popular uprising, disempowered Palestinians grabbed whatever they could: stones, rocks, bricks and dirt and hurled them at the Israeli occupying troops, protesting against what they saw as complete and utter injustice.
Megan Stack visits Israel during the second Palestinian intifada that began in 2000.
These intifadas symbolise the violent hostility between Palestine and Israel – a war without end.
It is now 2002 and Stack recalls, “suicide bombers came by day, and at night Israeli tanks seized Palestinian turf in the West Bank.
As she often writes, “violence fed violence. “Blood washed blood.” (Remember, “violence is an endless copy”. The Israelis launched Operation Defensive Shield which turned into Operation Determined Path. The Israelis were once again reoccupying the West Bank which undermined the Oslo Accords, forged in the wake of the agreement between the Israeli and Egyptian Presidents in … She notes, “twenty-four hours in Jerusalem spread like a road map to misery.” (40).
Renowned Israeli writer, Amos Oz, said that as a consequence of one such Israeli bombing campaign known as Operation Cast Lead (2008) that killed more than 1400 people, 40 percent of them children in the Gaza strip, the Palestinians will grow up with a burning sense of revenge. This will no doubt shape their outlook and the sense of themselves as a persecuted and victimized race of people with very little hope for the future.
Jerusalem-based psychiatrist Samah Jabr reminds us that accidental misfortunes and natural disasters are tragic, but they are impersonal; the horrors of war are deeply personal. She states, an earthquake does not “triumph”, but in war one party aims to triumph over and humiliate the other. The “feelings evoked, the sense of helplessness and impotent rage, are more painful”.
People’s reactions in times of conflict – not always flight-fight: Ms Jabr points out: “Faced with the immediate atrocity of war, people commonly experience a state of hyper-arousal in which they feel capable of fighting against or fleeing from danger; but they can also feel frozen in a state of helplessness. In years to come, they may be haunted by memories, nightmares and flashbacks of traumatic events.”
Consequences of and coping with conflict: Jabr believes that recent war in the Gaza Strip between 7 July and 25 August 2014, which caused 2,133 deaths (including 577 children) and over 11,000 injuries, will have a profound effect on the mental health of the population.
For example: Miriam lost her little sister years ago, when soldiers shot at the family’s car on the way to school. Even now, every time Miriam encounters a soldier, she relieves the shooting and the bitter taste of loss. She is stuck with that traumatic memory and it is taking over her life.
“We become what we do”
Jerusalem-based psychiatrist Samah Jabr reminds us that accidental misfortunes and natural disasters are tragic, but they are impersonal; the horrors of war are deeply personal. She states, an earthquake does not “triumph”, but in war one party aims to triumph over and humiliate the other. The “feelings evoked, the sense of helplessness and impotent rage, are more painful”.
People’s reactions in times of conflict: Ms Jabr points out: “Faced with the immediate atrocity of war, people commonly experience a state of hyper-arousal in which they feel capable of fighting against or fleeing from danger; but they can also feel frozen in a state of helplessness. In years to come, they may be haunted by memories, nightmares and flashbacks of traumatic events.”
Consequences of and coping with conflict: Jabr believes that recent war in the Gaza Strip between 7 July and 25 August 2014, which caused 2,133 deaths (including 577 children) and over 11,000 injuries, will have a profound effect on the mental health of the population.
For example: Miriam lost her little sister years ago, when soldiers shot at the family’s car on the way to school. Even now, every time Miriam encounters a soldier, she relieves the shooting and the bitter taste of loss. She is stuck with that traumatic memory and it is taking over her life.
Follow Paul McGeogh, The Age Middle East Correspondent: In “Afghan legacy dissolves in chaos”, he writes that in the Oruzgan province, where Australia did most of its good works, there has been a complete collapse of facilities since the death of the western-backed warlord and millionaire police chief, Matiullah Khan. It is claimed that most of the police are “walking away, surrendering and giving their weapons to the Taliban,” said MP Abdul Rahim Ayoubi. In some districts such as Deh Rawood, two local schools had been shuttered and “in healthcare we have nothing”. There is a slow return to the Taliban throughout the province.
The Pope’s visit
In 2014, Pope Francis urged the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to leave “no stone unturned” in the search for truth. He said that they “must respond” to their people’s yearning for peace. The pope made his appeal to Israeli President, Shimon Peres and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas. He said: “Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to conflict; yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities,”.
The piano player
During the three year siege of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Ayham Ahmed played his piano in the streets and the alleyways. He built a wheeled platform to help move the battered instrument around. “I sing the different colours of suffering of the people in the camp. And I teach music to kids because it is the only thing that can change their state of mind. However, since April playing the piano has been a dangerous activity and he has placed his life in danger. When the hardline Islamists took over the camp they banned music and recently burnt his piano. Still, he says, I am going to sing for love and peace even if no one helps us.
Some background on Karbala:
(Traditionally and ritualistically in Shi’ite communities, Hussein’s followers mourn his martyrdom for 40 days, and punish themselves for abandoning him to the enemy. They bring themselves through him back to life through acts of self-flagellation, or “torments of the flesh”.) Another holy site, is the shrine of Imam Ali in the holy city of Najaf.)“Religion is an amazing phenomenon that plays contradictory roles in people’s lives” says Al Shariati, the charismatic lecturer who helped lay the intellectual foundation of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. “It can destroy or revitalise, put to sleep or awaken, enslave or emancipate, teach docility or teach revolt”. (197).
On the plains of Karbala, etched deeply into the Shi’ia psyche, Hussein made the ultimate sacrifice when he, knowing his position of hopelessness, confronted the Sunni Caliph, Yazid’s governor Ubaydallah.
During this battle, Hussein sought to declare himself the one and only true successor to his grandfather Muhammad and his father, Ali (Muhammad’s step son). A revered scholar, rather than a warrior or statesman, Hussein pursued, according to many, the righteousness of his cause. To the Shia, Husseins’ journey to Iraq and the subsequently battle, came to be the ultimate act of courage, the most noble self-sacrifice, made in a state of higher consciousness. (, p. 178) the Shia lecturer, Ali Shariati, (who helped found the Iranian revolution) states, “for him, martyrdom is not a loss, but a choice. He will sacrifice himself on the threshold of the temple of freedom and be victorious.” (183) His act of martyrdom becomes an act of revelation “exposing repression and oppression, corruption and tyranny .. It was a call to action”. Hussein acted as a witness “for all the oppressed people of history. He has declared his presence in all wars, struggles and battlefields for freedom of every time and land. He died at Karbala so that he may be resurrected in all generations and all ages.”
Karbala becomes a symbol of Shia martyrdom – of the eternal battle between good and evil. It explains repression, but also provides hope and inspiration to rise up against it. (See Lesley Harrington’s After The Prophet: The epic story of the Shia-Sunni Split)
Return to Summary notes on Conflict