In my lifetime there has been one constant in our world that is part of every single day: WAR! The death toll from wars in the 20th Century is estimated to be more than 216,000,000. The human suffering that remains for war survivors beyond that staggering count is incomprehensible…and still human beings fight on.
Humanity’s ever more deadly conflicts have brought us such terms as “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “crimes against humanity,” “shock and awe,” “weapons of mass destruction,” etc. They all translate to agony and anguish for all too many inhabitants of our planet. No one wants to experience the intense pain caused by its ravages, but people continue to wage war on a more widespread and savage scale.
In seeing images of the wars that are covered most by our North American media – Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza – we see absolutely “no holds barred,” in the destruction wrought nor in causing human casualties.
Modern war has evolved from the traditional confrontation of soldier versus soldier in a clearly delineated arena to defend the honor of a country, or its leader or a cause, to being most often fought for low ideals in densely populated “residential” areas.
More and more the dead and other casualties are unarmed civilian “bystanders”- most especially women, children and the elderly, which comprise upward of 80% of all victims of war since 1945. In their book, Crimes of War, What the Public Should Know, Gutman and Rief make the following statement:
“In W.W. I, nine soldiers were killed for every civilian life lost. In today’s wars, it is estimated that ten civilians die for every soldier or fighter killed in battle.”
In late February, 2022, Russia moved against Ukraine to further its aggression in taking [primarily] Crimea in 2014. For two years there have been fierce battles in urban centers like Donetsk and Kherson with many civilian casualties. Add to this the frequent missile and drone attacks on residences and public places: there are no bounds in selecting targets for destruction.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian militants, known as Hamas, invaded the state of Israel and indiscriminately raped and pillaged its inhabitants, while taking hostages back to the Gaza Strip.
Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) were joined by the Lebanese-based Hezbollah in firing missiles indiscriminately into the north and west communities of Israel. Israel has retaliated with air bombardment that has levelled parts of Gaza and left much destruction. The resultant civilian casualties in urban areas have apparently shocked the world.
Who remembers why the war started and how it came to attacks on heavily populated areas? And this is not even the “tip of the iceberg” of what has occurred and is occurring in other war-torn regions of the world!
Dr. Paul Grossrieder, one-time Director of General Affairs, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), detailed some of the horrors of war upon civilian populations in his public lecture presented at Lancaster University on 13th July, 2002:
“How can any sense be made of the 24 million people displaced within their own countries, or of the 18 million forced to flee to foreign lands…According to a survey carried out by the ICRC in a dozen countries, more and more wars are being fought against civilians, especially unarmed civilians.
“In Columbia, Angola, the Balkans, and eastern Congo for example, people have regularly been terrorized by groups of combatants. Displaced people, acting heads of households, and children separated from their parents are among the victims of this terror. More and more people go “missing,” while women are bought and sold…”
Dr. Grossrieder went on to describe sexual violence against women, illegitimate children from rape and the accompanying social repercussions, trafficking of women and children for the sex trade. He spoke of the restriction of civilian movement due to landmines, military roadblocks and snipers making the acquisition of food and water exceedingly dangerous.
According to his information, women were especially exposed to these and other dangers as they were expected to perform tasks traditionally falling to men, such as farming and conducting business.
One profound conclusion he makes is that the worst consequences of war are connected with the break-up of the family and the collapse of the educational system.
During the first decade of the 21st Century, Darfur, a region of western Sudan, was persecuted by a large government supported militia known as Janjaweed with an apparent mandate of genocide. This Moslem-Arab paramilitary force was sent to Moslem-African villages where they proceeded to kill civilians of every age, burn down homes, wipe out crops and livestock, conduct mass executions, destroy vital infrastructure, commit rape against women and kidnap children at will.
And what of children living in the war-torn areas of sub-Saharan Africa, South America, South and Southeast Asia and the Mid-East? Human Rights Watch (HRW), which asserts a claim to be the largest human rights group based in the United States, offers a synopsis of child soldiering as follows:
“In dozens of countries around the world, children have become direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, some 300,000 children are serving as soldiers in current armed conflicts. These young combatants participate in all aspects of contemporary warfare. They wield AK47s and M-16s on the front lines of combat, serve as human mine detectors, participate in suicide missions, carry supplies, and act as spies, messengers or lookouts.”
HRW concludes that the recruitment and use of child soldiers cannot produce any future good for them or their societies of origin:
“Because of their immaturity and lack of experience, child soldiers suffer higher casualties than their adult counterparts. Even after the conflict is over, they may be left physically disabled or psychologically traumatized. Frequently denied an education or the opportunity to learn civilian job skills, many find it difficult to re-join society. Schooled only in war, former child soldiers are often drawn into crime or become easy prey for future recruitment.”
Long after wars have been fought, people, and especially children, have to deal with the dangerous remnants of battle. Conservative estimates place the worldwide number of landmines waiting for detonation in war zones or former war zones to be over 90,000,000. Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) maintains that landmines kill or maim approximately 26,000 civilians every year. UNICEF calculates that 30 to 40% of all landmine victims are under the age of 15, and that mines kill and mutilate between 8,000 and 10,000 children annually.
In modern wars and warfare there is no real effort to keep the conflict between combatants – the populations on each side of any conflagration are made vulnerable to suffering and death in so many ways that irreparably damage peoples and nations for generations.
There is much more we can detail about modern warfare’s disregard for non-combatant “innocents”. Fortunately there is an end to all of this suffering for the men, women and children on this planet – and it is coming soon!
There is a prophecy from Isaiah found in the Bible that offers the hope of not just the eradication of war, but the need to ever learn it again – Isaiah 54:7:
“’For a mere moment I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,’ Says the Lord, your Redeemer. ‘For this is like the waters of Noah to Me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, so I have sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from you, nor My covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has mercy on you…[verse 13]…All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.”
