THE INNOCENT VICTIMS OF WAR
2 APRIL 2022
I’ve written here before about a trip I made seven years ago to a Syrian refugee camp just outside Beirut. It was one of the most heartbreaking days of my life. Seeing what these people had been reduced to, through absolutely no fault of their own, was soul-destroying. Unfortunately in those intervening seven years, we’ve seen it happen time and again, and now another exodus is happening from Ukraine. On page 30 of today’s issue you can read TV producer Inga Lovric’s account of fleeing her native Bosnia when war broke out there. She evokes perfectly the crippling decisions that people escaping war have to make. Her mother had to decide between leaving with her daughter or staying behind to do necessary, vital work at the hospital where she worked, which was naturally overrun. In the past few weeks, I’ve read numerous accounts from Ukraine of people – mostly women, as the men have to stay behind to fight – having to choose between getting themselves and their children to safety or staying to help their elderly parents. It’s a no-win situation and a choice nobody should ever be faced with. Again and again, situations like this serve only to emphasise the futility of war. The big, brave (mainly) men who sit in their gilded palaces and make decisions to invade rarely, if ever, suffer the effects directly. It is the people on the bottom, those who are living in the targeted area or are sent to the frontline, who have no more interest in fighting against their equally innocent neighbours, who pay the ultimate price. It makes me feel angry and helpless in equal measure. On that day in the camp in Becca, what struck me most was how like me these people once were. They went to college, had good jobs, lived in nice houses, and enjoyed going to concerts and festivals. They took holidays with their families, cooked food together and went on dates. They were normal. Then political decisions were made that had absolutely nothing to do with them and now they were living in tents, eating scraps, unable to protect their families and with very little possibility they’ll ever see their homeland again. There was no end in sight for them either. I often wonder about them, especially the young children, and worry what became of them. Are they still stuck in those tents with no prospects, no dreams, no hopes for the future? Or did they manage, like Inga, to make it to another country and carve out a life for themselves? Even if they were able to do this, it can never be a truly fulfilled life if you are forced to live it far from your homeland. The whole thing is beyond infuriating and so, so sad. Until these people are able to return to their home, we must help them as much as we possibly can. But the ultimate aim should be to stop the war and allow Ukraine – and all the other countries affected by needless violence – to be a normal, functioning society once again.
Enjoy the issue.