Question for DUers: Who among us has lived in a war zone?

[robdogbucky]

as a civilian. I am not interested in hearing about the military aspect of same. If you are military then start your own thread, this one is strictly for civilians in said war zone.

What is/was it like to be shelled? To have your family killed? To not know if your home would be blown up while you slept? To maybe have your own family torn apart by civil war, with brothers and sisters on opposite sides of the conflict?

Wonder what it is like to know that there are folks watching from far away, both cheering and booing about what is happening in your own country? Like it was a soccer match or something, like when they can just turn off the TV or computer and walk outside in safety to get away from the fray taking place far away.

Can any DUers that have experienced combat as a civilian please relate what it is like?

I do think we need a fresh perspective on this.

Maybe you can answer during a commercial?



Duck, Jamir, here comes more of UN/Obama's freedom!




Just my dos centavos


robdogbucky

[in_cog_ni_to]

1. I'll just K & R this for ya. Never been in a war zone myself, so I'll but out :)

[tabatha]

2. I lived in a country where one sector of the population

was brutalized by the other, often using guns and sometimes with military equipment.
http://www.casr.ca/id-blast-resistant-vehicles-2.htm

Read about it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Kaffir-Boy-Autobiography---Youths-Apartheid/dp/0684848287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300652227&sr=8-1

[robdogbucky]

7. You provide two links to subject matter about S.A.

Did you live there under apartheid?

Are you white or black, and it doesn't matter to me, but I am trying to draw you out a bit.

And there is a lot I would like to know about the experience I asked about in my OP.

We need more of this perspective being described, debated, related, confessed, whatever.

Have a problem with it? Ignore it and me then.

The people I have known that have experienced war as a civilian (both civil wars and national wars) were African refugees that experienced ethnic strife, and then ethnic Chinese refugees (boat people) from the Cholon District of Saigon and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Europe, who not only knew of war from a civilian perspective, they knew it from being direct victims of genocide. In each of these instances the folks were radically and irrevocably affected. Nonetheless I learned valuable lessons in talking with all of them about it.

That is what I am interested in learning more about here. How does this change you if you survive it?

Don't we already have enough threads about all the other things always talked about like missile strikes, UN votes and European/Arab League posturing, about not helping other deserving countires, etc.?




Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

[tabatha]

9. Yes, I lived in SA under Apartheid. I was born there.

I had black friends. Many. They taught me a lot. I knew what was going on. I attended NUSAS meetings at Wits.

[robdogbucky]

11. Thanks, Tabatha

now I can relate. That must have been difficult. I am trying to think if I have ever known anyone from there and can't recall. My only direct knowledge of that time and place would be through media and literature, like Nadine Gortimer, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, movies about it, etc. At the time of apartheid I recall all those UN votes, where it would be US, Israel, SA on one side and then the rest of the world on the other side on votes. There lies another reason for me to cast a doubting eye on all I hear and read coming out on the current situations. This maneuvering has been happening with us in the middle of it for a long time, the '40s I believe, when UK could no longer muster it.

I just hope the middle east is not the US Lord of the Flies story.

Please feel free to elaborate on your experience. I respect you and wish you and your home country well.




Hands off my Social Security!
Hands off Latin America!


rdb

[tabatha]

12. I will have to take some time to write it up.

[leftstreet]

3. What would you hope to learn that can't be imagined?

:shrug:

[BillyJack]

4. I have not (thankfully) ever lived in a war zone...but, I'm not done living yet, so who knows what

the future holds.

I can't even imagine how difficult/horrendous that that would be.

:cry:

[murielm99]

5. My daughter was living in Bolivia when there was

unrest and a change in government. She seemed to take it very calmly. However, she got out of the country as quickly as possible. She was relieved to come home.

[sibelian]

6. Excellent question, I certainly haven't. nt

[patrick t. cakes]

8. not yet......nt

[swilton]

10. Good question

We as a country have no business dropping bombs on them 'for their liberation' unless/until we have walked in their shoes!

[robdogbucky]

13. I was hoping to see more responses

but I haven't. I can only conclude that not that many DUers have experienced wartime as a civilian.

If so, and I am wrong to reach conclusions from that lack of response, and there are some, please chime in and give us an education.

I really think this would be valuable to the overall picture being drawn at the present time.

Wait, I just remembered another person living as a civilian in wartime, it was Riverbend from Baghdad. She finally fled the country to Syria from what I read and the last entry she made in 2007. Here it is:



Baghdad Burning


... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Monday, October 22, 2007

Bloggers Without Borders...

"Syria is a beautiful country- at least I think it is. I say “I think” because while I perceive it to be beautiful, I sometimes wonder if I mistake safety, security and normalcy for ‘beauty’. In so many ways, Damascus is like Baghdad before the war- bustling streets, occasional traffic jams, markets seemingly always full of shoppers… And in so many ways it’s different. The buildings are higher, the streets are generally narrower and there’s a mountain, Qasiyoun, that looms in the distance.


The mountain distracts me, as it does many Iraqis- especially those from Baghdad. Northern Iraq is full of mountains, but the rest of Iraq is quite flat. At night, Qasiyoun blends into the black sky and the only indication of its presence is a multitude of little, glimmering spots of light- houses and restaurants built right up there on the mountain. Every time I take a picture, I try to work Qasiyoun into it- I try to position the person so that Qasiyoun is in the background.


The first weeks here were something of a cultural shock. It has taken me these last three months to work away certain habits I’d acquired in Iraq after the war. It’s funny how you learn to act a certain way and don’t even know you’re doing strange things- like avoiding people’s eyes in the street or crazily murmuring prayers to yourself when stuck in traffic. It took me at least three weeks to teach myself to walk properly again- with head lifted, not constantly looking behind me.


It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere. There are areas like Geramana and Qudsiya that are packed full of Iraqi refugees. Syrians are few and far between in these areas. Even the public schools in the areas are full of Iraqi children. A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living..."

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

The entries there now still goes back to 2006, so if one has the time they can read about the Iraq occupation from a civilian's perspective.


I miss her.



Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

[hobbit709]

14. I haven't but my mother can tell you about Austria 1938-45.

24 hour round the clock bombing. Walking a mile or so with a bucket to find a functioning water line. Crawling through bombed out buildings to pick up pieces of wood so you can have fire for heat and cooking because all coal was used for the war effort. Walking 15 miles into the country to find a farmer willing to trade eggs or whatever for your family jewelry. The basic food ration the last winter of the war was 2 kilos of potatoes per person per week and you were lucky to get half that. If there was some kind of meat in the beans, you didn't ask what it was, you ate it. I remember my mother in the early 50's nailing a rat that ran across the room from 15 feet away with her wooden soled shoe-she obviously had practice.

[Ellipsis]

17. Mine too. They missed the last train out of Paris and spent the occupation there

A few people shot on the street from time to time and a similar story about running down the alleys of Paris after curfew with her potatoes with "the sound of hobnail boots" following her she kept to herself.

The Germans dynamited the city but the general didn't blow it up on retreat, I guess he figured what was the point. Then the allies came in and the first thing they did was bomb the shit out of the train station.

When Bush was doing the whole torture thing during Iraq... I never saw her so vexed in my life. So I imagine there was a lot she left out.

Even being a generation removed from what happened, it affected you.

[MedleyMisty]

19. There's protests going on in Syria right now

And yes, some protesters have been killed.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/03/2011320113138901721.html

Hope she's okay.

[robdogbucky]

21. I know, that Syria situation just came up.

I wonder which country is next to have civil unrest or demands for regime change?

Does anyone have any updated info on Riverbend I wonder?

I recall once she was contemplating something like a book tour to lecture about this subject of life in Iraq, but I don't know what became of it or her family members.

Maybe she checks out DU!




It only takes one bomb to ruin your whole day.

[Ferret Annica]

15. I am a Army war veteran

I took part in the action in Panama and Gulf War I. I was in the U.S. Army for 9 years and had intended to stay in and retire after returning to the Army. (I got out after my first enlistment.)

I got out though because I became aware of the criminal nature of the Bush family and administration largely because of what I saw and learned during my participation in these conflicts.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. I haven't but my Palestinian optometrist and Pakistani doctor have told me about it.

Both women who are, not surprisingly, anti-war.

[robdogbucky]

18. I just remembered some more people that I met in my life

that had lived through war/combat/violence/terror as a civilian. One was a native of Belfast and she had married an American and had come to the US to escape the sectarian violence there and she lived across the hall from me back east.

Another woman I met was a Guatamelan Indian whose family had been exposed to death squads. She married a gringo that had gone to study in Guatamela. I met them when he worked on a US Forest Service fire crew and they lived in graduate student housing with their babies.

My Grandfather, whose house I grew up in was a native of County Sligo in Ireland, and he followed his older brother coming here to escape the famine and the sectarian violence rained down upon the Irish by the British. I do not know any particulars of what Gramps may have done, but he didn't come here until he was 30 years old. Otherwise a good-humored person, he would turn livid and his entire face would change to a hateful, fearful scowl whenever I mentioned the British.

Still, the responses to this thread thus far are interesting even if it is a limited sample set. I would hope more would chime in with stories of their or their family members' experience as a civilian in a war zone.

Does this mean that there are few if any, people that read and post on DU that have actually experienced warfare from a civilian's point of view?

That could lead one to certain conclusions, but I doubt we can rely on such a small sampling.

Oh, well, I tried.



Hands off my Social Security!
Hands off Latin America!


rdb

[antigone382]

20. I'd say you're gonna have to keep kicking, and give a thread like this time.

It appears that you only posted it a few hours ago, on a Sunday evening, when business is probably a little slow around here. I would imagine DUers with firsthand experience as civilians in a war zone are probably in the minority, considering the demographics (most are U.S. citizens with regular internet access, from which you can infer a lot). However, this is a large enough community that there could still be a significant number of DUers who have had that experience, but it will take them awhile to see and respond to your thread. Keep it in view, and you'll probably collect some interesting responses in a few days' time. Sometimes threads that take a while to get going turn out to be the best and most interesting.

On the other hand, people who have been in war zones are often so traumatized that discussing it is enormously difficult or impossible for them, so if you don't get a great reaction, I imagine that's why.

[robdogbucky]

22. Thanks for the input antigone382, that is what I think is going on.

Especially the PTSD part. And that is the part I am most interested in hearing about.

We are all in denial about such things and the hawks have the perfect situation for waging wars with a detached, far-removed, unthinking electorate that appears to just yawn at the onset of new warfare. Having a well-known bully that has also been demonized for decades helps to sway people too.

As long as it is on the other side of the world and stuff, eh? Civilians? What do they matter? Who cares what they think? Who cares what they want? Funny the concern level suddenly about Libyan civilians, no?

Still, as I have enumerated them as I recall them, I have had a strikingly large numbers of contact in my life with such people. I have worked with former citizens of Romania, that were targets of that regime under the communist regime there that was a police state. That is almost to the level of warfare, as totalitarianism of that variety in a modernized country can be insidious and destructive too, even if it is not a shooting war or physically violent state apparatus. That was mostly psychological warfare on the populace in Romania.

Along with all those others I mentioned, from Germany's holocaust, VietNam, Guatamela, Northern Ireland, etc., I just assumed others like on here at DU would have some experience. Or at least be able to recount experiences related by friends they have come to know or family members that did experience it.

We shall see.


rdb

[truedelphi]

24. I am fairly certain, and have been for years, that if

Americans had actually experienced war times and what that situation is really like, we would not be so willing to inflict such an absolute hellish environment on others.

Way too many smug, white skinned people living in suburbia think that fighting a war is about putting a yellow ribbon decal on their back bumper.

[Vehl]

23. I have

I grew up in war torn SriLanka, and had the fortune to be born a Hindu Tamil; who were being discriminated against by the Sinhalese majority from the day the nation got independence from the British.

Ive lost a couple of family members (Granddad's sis, her husband) due to the indiscriminate shelling/bombing of the cities in the North&East of the island.(that's where the Minority Tamils live, compared to the South&west of the island where the majority Sinhalese do). We were made scapegoats due to the inability of the Sinhalese politicians(Who made up the government; given that it was a one man-one vote system of government..resulting in the assured rule of the Majority over the minority...) to create more job opportunities for the Sinhalese after the nation got independence in the late 40s.They took the time tested path of "You don't have any jobs cos the evil minorities have all the jobs" line and fed the communal flames. Pretty much the same thing the Nazis did regarding the Jewish people in pre ww2 Germany.The only difference being that the Jewish people were not native to Germany, while we were to the island.

I've seen the continuous propaganda the government media arms spew to keep the people in check...given that even many of the Majority would have called on to stop what their own government has been doing to the minority if they had but known the extent of the atrocities and pogroms. But going by the age old maxim of out of sight, out of mind they were content to let the government do whatever it wished.The Fear of the "other" is so easy to cultivate when the government has a monopoly on the media outlets...and perpetuates stories about how the minority holds on to the majority of the wealth/professional jobs to the detriment of the Majority. Little do they mention that the minority earned the jobs they held due to diligence and hard work..but then again people always like to find easy solutions to the problems of their own making by blaming others.

However, I digress. speaking of war zone experiences..yes..as a kid I have been shot at by helicopters...which btw shoot at anything that moves..even in a city. One of my scariest experiences is of taking cover behind a small depression on the ground from Helicopter fire. The funny part was that it was in the evening/nighttime and I was returning to my grandparent's home after visiting a neighbor. I saw what looked like a rain of bright red lights. I was so fascinated by the surreal beauty of it that I just stood there watching it...till my friend..who was also a 5 year old like me; shouted at me that they are machinegunfire!. Both of us took cover..and hid there while we heard the copter hovering somewhere above us...the thump/thump of its rotors wash beating down upon us. The absense of sunlight and the surrounding vegetation saved as, as the copter moved away a few minutes later. Only a few years later was I able to figure out why the machinegunfire looked so vividly red.It is because every 3rd round in an ammunition box/chain is a tracer round..allowing the shooter to see where his bullets go, during night time. I was rather startled to realize that the veritable "rain" I saw was but one third of the actual number of bullets being sprayed! Ive also seen bombs being dropped by Aircraft....It might surprise many that it is actually possible to see the falling bombs..if they are not too far away!They look like tiny black dots falling. In fact after some practical experience of being in the receiving end(with which i could have simply done without!.lol) its even possible to gauge the approximate destination of fired mortars by their sound and direction alone. Some extended range mortars have two explosive charges to propel the mortar...the first one shoots it out of the launcher..and at the apogee of its path, a second explosion shoots its even further..giving it extended range. When one listens to the "thump" of the launch...and then hears the other explosion somewhere above him..he can get some relief from the fact that the mortar would not be falling anywhere near...but would travel further away...anyways...these are but a few of the experiences one pics up when living in a war zone...apart from the usual lack of electricity& medical supplies


Living in a war zone was not a pretty experience at all. However; imho it does improve one's determination to hold onto values which one considers important. I would say that my choice to be a liberal was heavily influenced by the authoritarian/draconian government I experienced. The same goes for central authority. Centralized authority always leads to abuse if there are not checks and balances.


PS: I just realized that you asked for our opinion regarding the Libyan conflict as well. To be honest; I support the rebels and welcome the Coalition strike against the Gadaffi regime. Why? cos When I, as a civilian was living in a war-zone, hoping the next bomb would not fall on my head; I really did wish that some country would take the initiative and put a stop to the excesses/military campaign of the government. The Libyan rebels were getting pounded by the Gadhaffi forces and would have been massacred, along with innumerable civilians; if nothing had been done to prevent it. In this regard...the coalition intervention probably ended up saving more lives.Doubly so when its a known fact that Gadhaffi is a dictator(and no..i don't use this term lightly, as the repugs do) and is more concerned about him than the welfare of his people. When he started killing protesters, he crossed the line for me.Ive seen similar stuff happen before to know that just turning a blind eye to this would not have helped.He could have massacred the rebels, their families..and any so called "supporters"(fill in anyone whom Gadaffi/his supporters dont like in the "rebel supporters" category...especially journalists...human rights/democracy proponents). It would have been perfect opportunity to "clean house". The rest of the population will be quiet..cos they would know what would happen to them if they protest. In other words, it would be a state rule by fear.

However, I hope America and the coalition has the foresight to keep a very very low profile..and let the Libyans form their own government when the dust settles and Gadaffi is defeated.A wise man knowns when to stop..and I fear some in the intelligence/military industrial complex might look at this as an opportunity to make some $ for themselves and the big corps. If they decide to do so, it would cost all the goodwill the coalition attacks have generated from the Libyan people.