The psychological scars of war
“We got up, but my father remained attached to the floor"
In war, there are spaces absent from the humanitarian landscape, in which people are licking their wounds or dying silently in the face of the uncaring media and its audience. The war is like a fire in a forest, in which only the highest trees are seen burning, while everything else, down to the living organisms on the forest floor, die in silence.
Those who look more carefully at the victims of war will find many more tragedies than those most directly obvious from the impact of each incident. Some victims are still writhing from pain [months/years] later, and some have died of the psychological scars and the severe trauma they’ve experienced.
As a human rights activist, every time I go to one of the four coastal districts of Taiz (Al-Mukha, Dhu Bab, Mawza, and Al-Waziyah) to document the human rights violations that occur there, I carefully examine the statements of witnesses and find that there are phrases and sentences tucked deep into their stories, that when explored, reveal that there the victims are not just those who were directly—physically—impacted.
On January 23, 2020 I went to As-Suffai village of Al-Waziyah District to document an incident of an anti-vehicle landmine explosion that had severely wounded and disabled six children. The landmine was left by the Ansar Allah (Houthi) armed group near the village. It exploded when the children found it, tampered with it, and threw stones at it from afar.
As I went to As-Suffai that day to examine the impact of the explosion on the victims and their families, feeling that the explosion would likely leave behind many psychological scars, particularly as the victims were children. Witnesses told me that the brother of one of the victims, 10-year-old Ali Nasser Al-Atoumi, was traumatized and scared because of his brother's injury. Since the explosion, he has been unable to sleep at night. He wakes up screaming and runs from his bed.
In a separate incident, Saudi/UAE-led Coalition warplanes bombed Al-Zahra'a school in Mawza city on August 8, 2016, causing severe damage to the school. According to the media, no civilians were directly harmed.
Nonetheless, what the journalists who reported on the incident, as well as most residents of the area, do not know is the psychological trauma that the airstrike inflicted on a young girl. Nusseibah Ammar Qassem, who was 15 years old at the time of the attack and lived near the school, suffered from post-traumatic stress, and anxiety, and has become more introverted as a result of the panic and fear she felt during the airstrike. After extensive treatment and care, her condition has now become relatively stable, but the effects of fear still threaten her.
The impact of trauma does not stop at just the psychological, as these are often then lead to physical illness that result in the death of the victim.
In another incident in Al-Waziyah District, the Ansar Allah (Houthi) armed group fired a mortar shell on one of a civilian home in Al-Hasham village on February 1, 2016, partially destroying the house. The 47-year-old owner of the house was also hit the with shrapnel in his hand and back, and his daughter 10-year-old daughter, Arwa, was hit with shrapnel in her head. They both recovered after being treated.
The impact of the shell did not stop at the man and his daughter, . The incident also cast a dark shadow over a young boy, Badr Muhammad Ibrahim Ghanem, who was 13 years old at the time of the attack, the house owner’s son and Arwa’s brother. He had been terrified by the blind shell, and death silently began growing within him, unbeknownst to anyone. His body began to become weak and took on a yellow hue. Then, he died ten days after the incident.
Moving back in time to the start of the war, Saudi/UAE-led coalition warplanes bombed Al-Omal residential compound in Mokha with nine missiles on the evening of Friday, July 24, 2015. This painful incident resulted in the deaths of 65 civilians, including 13 children and 12 women, and wounded at least 36 others, including 14 children and 13 women.
Located just next to the residential compound was a neighborhood called Al-Amoudi, which was the closest neighborhood to the compound. The residents of this neighborhood were watching the bombing occur as though it was part of a frightening movie on a very dark night. There was no light except for the glare from the rockets as they exploded, painting ghosts on the walls of the houses.
In one of the houses of this neighborhood was a fisherman, Ismail Ali Abdullah Boraiq (55 years old), who suffers from artery disease. He saw this terrible scene nine rockets, in succession, falling on a densely populated city and started calling out to his family members fearfully, "get down… get down".
His son, 30-year-old Yasser, recounted the moment, saying, "We all laid down on the floor, and so did my father. We remained lying on the floor until we realized that the aircrafts had finished dropping missiles and had left. Then, we got up, but my father remained attached to the floor. We told him that the aircraft had gone, and that he could get up. However, he showed no reaction to what we were saying. He remained where he was. When we realized that he was not responding, we got worried. We approached to help him get up, and found him motionless and his heart had stopped beating."
He added, "We were not able to take him to a hospital as it was late at night and it was not safe due to the situation of war and bombing. There was also not a health center or clinic open. So, we called a doctor to come over and examine him. When the doctor had examined him, he told us that he was dead. We spent our night in great sadness and fear, and could not go out to bury him for fear of the air bombing, so we buried him after dawn."
In this particular incident, the survivors and the families of the victims are still suffering from many diseases and psychological and health problems to this day, according to the head of the Association of Victims of Mokha Residential Compound.
The head of the Association, 36-year-old Yahya Abdulsamad Asseba'ei, stated that a series of chronic diseases, such as some types of cancer, diabetes, and heart and liver disease, have remarkably spread among the survivors, the wounded, and the families of the victims. These people never suffered from such diseases prior to the atrocious attack. Yahya believes that the reason behind this phenomenon is the psychological and neurological shocks felt by the community on that night, in addition to the substances emitted from the exploded missiles.
Many of the residents also suffered from displacement and homelessness, either because their homes were destroyed or because they fled in search of safety for themselves and their families. This cost them both materially and emotionally. But nothing could have protected them from the tragedies imposed by this war, which has had no boundaries and has swept the entire country into a blind war.
60-year-old Muhammad Ali Satta from Al-Kudaiha village of Mokha District was among those who were forcibly displaced by the Ansar Allah group (Houthis) in the summer of 2017. He took his wife and three daughters to Hays city in Hodeidah Governorate, which is more than 80 km north of his village, to temporarily settle in, thinking that he had gone away enough from the threats and fear that had befallen him in Mokha.
But in early February 2018, the UAE-backed joint forces advanced to parts of Hays, where fierce battles took place and left many civilians dead and wounded.
On one of these nights of battle, Muhammad Ali spent the night worried about his daughters. The next morning, he was exhausted from fear and his lack of sleep the night before. He had his breakfast and then left the house to the market to buy some household goods. As soon as he stepped out of his house, he found five dead bodies belonging to one of the parties to the conflict.
For him, this scene was the straw that broke the camel's back. He turned around and went back into the house and lay on his bed. Soon, he had symptoms of a stroke, and was taken to Aden for treatment. There, he was in clinical death for ten days, before he died.
People in conflict zones have are urgently in need of psychological care. It is clear from the scars caused by this unjust war that the conflict has become the responsibility of everyone. In the shadow of each incident, and behind each direct victim, lies additional pain and death from the psychological impact of this war on its victims.
