The Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols were a part of international law that was supposed to define the rules of war. The idea was that, if the world bought into this universal set of rules that wars could somehow be honorable, but the reality is that the “rules of war” are somewhat of an oxymoron. There will never be a war setting where “rules” are followed for the duration of the war when the cost is peoples’ lives. Think about it, how can such a thing as an honorable war even exist? Maybe in theory and as an ideal, but not in reality.
The war experience is such that those who find themselves in it have to come to terms that their very existence, and the existence of those around them, can come to a violent end at any time, for no other reason than being the wrong person at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Whenever people are thrust into these life and death situations, the reality is that they are void of humanity and dignity. In those situations, the animalistic urges to survive overtake humanistic thinking. Even for those in a war setting who are lucky enough to never have to take up arms, kill another person, and who are able to survive the war experience and emigrate elsewhere, the parasitic nature of the war experience is such that it will often latch on and follow them for life.
Biological Psychiatry: How the Effects of War Ripple Across Generations.
To better understand the war experience, it is necessary to understand that health requirements suggest that trained soldiers should not spend more than six consecutive months in active warzones because of the scarring nature of the war experience. Now, contrast that with the average family within the war zone, who gets surprised and overwhelmed by the war experience and that has to endure it for more than a year. Surviving the war experience and escaping to a safer place where the possibility of war is non-existent is not always enough for a total decompress of the war experience, which often requires access to other health supports too. For newcomer families who find themselves living in low-income communities and who struggle to obtain access to those health supports and acclimate to a new society, it is not uncommon for their children to struggle to make sense of their home-life struggles.
However, there is more to these challenges, and that has to do with the inheritable nature of trauma. The thought that trauma might have intergenerational properties to it was first explored in Canada at McGill University back in the 1960s, and the results were startling. That study involved children whose parents were Holocaust survivors and how they were being referred to child psychiatrists in disproportionate numbers—three times more frequently than the number of children referred from parents who had not encountered trauma during the war. These are the kind of outcomes that stem from the war experience, and which are only recognizable if viewed under a biological psychiatry lens.
Bunkering from the Reality of the War Experience.
Some of the realities associated with the war experience that tend to get bunkered away may be best illustrated in the form of questions. How much of the globalized world’s health and wellness struggles are the result of intergenerational trauma from the First World War and the Second World War, and all the other global wars of the 1900s? Are we reaching a point as a species where history’s wars are catching up to our society at a point in time when we should be peeking as a species? Has the internet created the conditions for the parasitic effects of the war experience to jump from person to person through cellular devices? When individuals are able to view the depravities associated with the war experience through their cellular devices, without ever being in it, to what extent does that trigger animalistic urges to overtake more humanistic ones?
Whether it is war in Europe or war in the Middle East, war is not possible without catastrophic losses. And the biggest supporters often tend to be those who have never felt the war experience and who have been radicalized to see the world through a singular lens. Not surprisingly, the biggest detractors are those who have first-hand familiarity with the war experience, because they live with the understanding that nobody wins and everybody loses. The vicious nature of the war experience and the role it plays in hardening the young can consume entire generations before churning them out after draining them of their life’s potential, and perhaps having them become something they were never meant to be.
War-hardened Kids Growing up in Low-income Communities.
During the 1990s, the Heron Gate area in Ottawa was a low-income community that was home to both Anglophone and Francophone Canadians trying to get back on their feet, but it also served as a haven for countless waves of newcomer Canadians like my family. During the 90s, that “newcomer Canadian” label almost exclusively represented families who were fleeing war-torn areas, and it allowed me to grow up around families who also experienced the war experience and some war-hardened children from places including Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Lione, Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan.
For me, growing up in Ottawa’s Heron Gate community served as an introduction to the world before my family moved on from the area. Many years later, I would come to understand how the existence of toxic influences in the area and an assortment of other factors combined to mould youth, and disproportionately affecting war-hardened kids, into becoming less than they were capable of. Many succumb to the peer pressures of gangs and weapons violence, some still serving long sentences at Kingston Penitentiary, but I understand their sad reality.
For those on the outside looking in, however, they might read the “foreign sounding names” in articles about weapons violence or drug trafficking and conclude that individuals arriving to Canada from the war-torn countries, like the ones I mentioned, are undesirable and destined for chaos. This conclusion, despite being completely inaccurate, ignores the negative influences that often exist in low-income communities and nowhere else, but also how war-hardened children or children coming from families that have lived the war become magnets that involuntarily attract these self-defeating influences.
One childhood friend whose family survived the war experience in Kuwait family was comprised of a single mom and all boys—quite a few of them. Every single one of the brothers would end up on a “Most Wanted” list either municipally, provincially, or federally—with the oldest currently serving a life sentence in Kingston Penitentiary. Another childhood friend whose family survived the war experience in Somalia was comprised of two parents and all boys, and saw the boys suffer a similar fate. The oldest committed femicide, the middle was radicalized and attempted to join a terrorist organization, and the youngest one that was in my grade 8 class was killed in a shootout in the parking lot of a shopping mall.
Perhaps it is important to note that not every war-hardened child growing up in a low-income community has a tragic ending. One Iraqi youth I knew had an older brother who was being bullied by a gang of bikers who wanted to extort him. After increasing verbal threats and harassment from the gang of bikers, the older brother made it clear to them that as his family survived Saddam Hussien, he was not intimidated by them and that he would out-survive them if them they did not leave him alone. So, they did. But that situation too, could just as easily have had an unhappy ending.
What should be addressed when discussing the war experience is that our common humanity should unite us more than our national or theological divide separates us. As Canadians, we know this better than most. Despite being lucky that an ocean separates us physically from the wars being waged elsewhere, on the basis of morality there can be no separation on where we stand when it comes to the war. Nobody wins, and everybody loses.
