You begin to hate that love.”Ĭivilians trapped in the war zones of Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s lived in constant danger. You then realize that it is your love for them that is killing you. “The knowledge that they are in constant danger consumes you,” he wrote. In one disquieting post, a father described the intense anxiety he felt when his children went off on their own to school. Some Iraqis wrote their own stories, apart from the work of war correspondents, using blogs to tell the world their experiences. troops seized Baghdad, another Iraqi man described the impact on him: “We’re against the occupation, we refuse the occupation - not one hundred percent, but one thousand percent,” he told Shadid. The culture of the gun and its unsubtle logic had come to dominate.” When U.S. Overrun and disfigured, it was no longer the city he had known,” Shadid wrote. “Its morals had changed, as had its etiquette. Shadid, who died reporting on conflict in Syria in 2012, learned from an Iraqi artist how war had altered Baghdad. In “ Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War,” the renowned war correspondent Anthony Shadid drew on his knowledge of Iraq and the region to probe the human cost that began with the US invasion in 2003, which he covered for The Washington Post. The past experiences of an Iraqi man in Baghdad, a woman in Laos, a Bosnian Muslim - along with the ongoing bloodshed in Ukraine - illuminate the endless cycle of civilian carnage in war. In searing detail, the books noted here show the scope of the suffering. These authors reveal the anger and sadness of victims whose lives are forever changed by national leaders and political forces beyond their control. Some intrepid writers, however, have captured the struggles of ordinary folks when their homes and churches and playgrounds become targets on the battlefield. Their plight unfolds in contemporary news reporting but often is quickly forgotten. War literature is vast, but few books zero in on the trauma of civilians. As Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian cities intensify, it’s all but certain that civilians asleep in their homes will die in their beds. Those lucky enough to survive often become part of a flood of refugees. People of all races, ethnicities, religions and nationalities from Ukraine to Iraq to Laos to Somalia have endured devastating consequences: lost families, lost homes, lost livelihoods, demolished cities and disruptions that can never be put right. Each time a new round of barbarity strikes, we’re reminded of the suffering of civilians in past conflicts. The horror inflicted on civilians in war is nothing new. Every day we get new images of Russia’s bombardment of the innocent: homes blasted apart, hospitals leveled, cars and buses shredded, mothers and children dead in the streets, and in one heartbreaking photo, a bloodied pregnant woman ferried away on a stretcher only to lose her baby and her own life later. The civilian catastrophe in Ukraine is hard to witness.
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