It’s getting harder to watch the news at night, and lately I find myself turning off the radio when war reports begin. It’s not that I don’t want to know what’s going on; far from it. Having been in a war zone decades ago, during the civil war in El Salvador, I have a sense of what can happen on the ground in conflict zones. However, unlike some news reports I’m not keeping a tally of the dead and injured, the hours of bombing, the number of missiles that landed or were intercepted, the number of buildings destroyed, or key figures killed.
Instead, I think about daily life for civilians. What might it really be like in hot spots? Or in refugee camps? How do they survive? What I focus on is not easy to count. The sound of bombardments that ring out and rock buildings and bodies. How sound intensifies at night. So too feelings of helplessness. Parents desperately trying to protect their children, yet unable to. The number of children robbed of their innocence. In conflict zones childhood innocence is a luxury afforded few, if any.
And then there is fear – a weapon of war that is as immeasurable as it is pervasive. How it hangs in the air like an invisible fog. How people breathe it in, and get soaked on the inside. How do traumatised adults ever recover? And what about their children? Is this not the fertile ground in which seeds of hatred are sewn? Hatred or trauma that can last a lifetime – passing down through generations.
One scene etched on the back of my eyelids occurred long after the weapons stopped firing, and peace was brokered. A motley looking stream of men and women with an array of injuries – paralysis, missing limbs, scars and pain – hobble, roll in wheelchairs, or lurch along the road. War wounded from both sides of the decade-long conflict, (the FMLN and the military), protest that they have been forgotten. Demanding the desperate help they need, they march as one. Unimaginable during wartime, enemies now united.
It’s hard not to think about the long-term consequences of war. The seeds being sewn in current conflicts. And the aftermath. Not just at an institutional, political or infrastructure level, but for the many people forced to live with loss, be that the death of loved ones, loss of homes, of place, physical injury, or loss of innocence. And what about loss of hope? Or loss of faith in humanity?
Around twenty years ago, I listened to British Foreign correspondent, Christina Lamb, speak a about her book, The Sewing Circles of Herat, at a writer’s festival. (In 1988, Lamb was named Young Journalist of the Year for her coverage of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Readers might know her as co-author of, I am Malala, or Nujeen.) During that presentation she told one story that lingered long after she left the stage. In Afghanistan, she had been desperate to get to where the action was – the front line in the war – and arranged a lift with the mujaheddin. When they stopped en route, people fleeing the conflict thought she was a doctor, and desperately sought her help. She described one woman, crouched over her young daughter, cradling her. Seven year old Lela had been hit by a rocket. The child lay still, eyes open but glazed, hovering between life and death.
‘If she dies it is too much for my mind,’ Lela’s mother intoned, explaining that her husband had been killed, and her sons had not returned since the fighting began two days prior. Lela was all this mother had left. ‘Please can you help us?’ she pleaded.
The young correspondent walked away, headed towards the car, and made some notes. She writes, ‘I had to get where the action was. I wasn’t getting the point that it was all around us.’
'I’m a firm believer that the hardest thing to find in war is the truth. However, the suffering of many people in conflict zones is one truth I adhere to. I hardly need listen to daily war reports to remind me of that.'
Years later, Lamb concluded, ‘The real story of war wasn’t about the firing and the fighting…’ She realised it was about people, just like Lela and her mother, ‘the sons and daughters, the mothers and fathers.’ And all their losses.
That’s what I reflect on. The long-term human cost. The price paid by people who do not feature in the headlines. The people who become collateral damage. Those who live with damage or loss, caused by war, for the rest of their lives. Most of all, I think of young children being robbed of their innocence.
That’s why I find it difficult to listen to the news. Besides, I’m a firm believer that the hardest thing to find in war is the truth. However, the suffering of many people in conflict zones is one truth I adhere to. I hardly need listen to daily war reports to remind me of that.
Michele Gierck is author of 700 Days in El Salvador, and a freelance writer based in Melbourne
Main image: (Getty Images)