by David Kavanagh

With the ever escalating turmoil in Gaza and the downing of flight MH17 getting almost all of the media’s attention these days, it’s easy to forget the other conflicts currently raging on worldwide.

Syria’s destructive civil war, for instance, is steadily approaching the mid point of its third year, with its inhabitants having witnessed their bloodiest week on record at the end of the last month after much-despised President Bashar Al-Assad was sworn in for his third term in office.

Furthermore, with UN-backed peace talks failing (largely due to the government’s refusal to listen to the demands of oppositional or “terrorist” forces), and hundreds of rebel groups fighting both the administration and one another, it’s unlikely that the bloodshed will abate anytime soon. If anything, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Since the Arab Spring inspired protests against Assad’s repressive government set the war into motion back in March 2011, over 150000 Syrians have been killed, and almost 3 million have fled to the overcrowded refugee camps in neighbouring Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan.

A further 6.5 million are thought to be displaced within Syria itself, many cut off from aid efforts.

The widespread violence, spiralling economy and debilitating collapse of health and education services has put the country in such poor shape that the UN has made its largest appeal ever, asking for $6.5 billion, in order to provide food, water, shelter, and medical care for those that need it (which is approximately three-quarters of the population).

Given these stats, there’s no denying that the real world carnage in Syria is immense and in need of close attention.

However, Under Siege, a UNICEF report released back in March, revealed that there’s a whole other spectrum of issues to consider, namely revolving around the psychological wellbeing of Syria’s future generation.

Your neighbourhood grassroots activist has probably badgered you about this way too much already, but it really is time to think of the children.

What’s the damage?

According to UNICEF, of the 5.5 million children who have been directly affected by the war and are in need of humanitarian assistance of some kind, a substantial 2 million will require expert psychological help in order to overcome the mental trauma they’ve experienced. It’s not hard to see why.

Although the news stories you encounter on a day to day basis might only deal, quite clinically, with numbers and statistics (e.g. how many people were killed today? how many houses were destroyed? how many refugees have been processed?), it’s important to occasionally pinch ourselves and remember that each number represents a human being.

Atrocities beyond belief are committed (by both government forces and rebel fighters) and witnessed by children all the time.

Whole neighbourhoods are reduced to rubble, forcefully separating families from the homes that they’ve grown up and formed identities in.

Since the start of the conflict, over 8000 children have reached Syria’s borders in search of refuge without their parents.

What’s more, in the past 3 years, Syria’s children have been forced to mature at an alarming rate: 1 in 10 refugee kids now work to sustain themselves and their relatives and, in Jordan, 1 in 5 girls are forced into early marriages, in which they are often subjected to exploitation and domestic abuse .

UNICEF Executive Director, Anthony Lake, says: “For Syria’s children, the past three years have been the longest of their lives. Must they endure another year of suffering?”

A distraught family mourns the loss of relatives during fighting in Syria. The boy cries: “Asma… Nadima… My sisters are dead”. Many in Syria are familiar with these kind of tragic experiences.

The psychological effects of war:

The extreme trauma faced by Syrian children has resulted in many suffering from a whole host of psychological and behavioural disorders.

According to a 2002 paper by researchers from the University of Missouri-Columbia, of 800 children interviewed following the 1994 Siege of Sarajevo, 40% were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PSTD symptoms (depression, anxiety, fear, anger, aggression, self-destructive behaviour) have been found in many children in Syria as well.

Adding to that, studies conducted on individuals in various war zones around the world have shown that people who have experienced severe emotional trauma are much more prone to drug addiction, alcoholism, and sexual promiscuity or prostitution, as these seem to provide a way of coping with intense stress and confusion.

In Afghanistan, a nation that has seen its fair share of war and terrorism over the past few years, nearly 1 million youths are reportedly addicted to drugs such as opium, heroin and others, and the use of dirty needles to administer these drugs has helped the spread of HIV. It is likely that similar problems will arise in Syria.

The threat to international security:

The issue of poor mental health extends far beyond Syria.

As reported by the Washington Times, in August 2013, US Senator John McCain called for further non-aggressive intervention in Syria, noting that: “We now have a million children who are refugees… who will grow up to hate us because they feel strongly that we have abandoned them with some justification.”

Senator McCain’s fears are not ungrounded for two reasons.

Firstly, traumatic experiences can often result in a tendency to act violently and with aggression. Secondly, according to Harvard University’s assistant Professor Theresa Betancourt and voanews.com:

Youth who relate to a particular ideology—even by identifying with extremist groups involved in violence—suffer less mental health distress.

This implies that some may turn to extremist groups, such as ISIS, a zealous jihadist movement dedicated to establishing an Islamic caliphate governed by strict Sharia law in Syria and Iraq, in order to cope with the stressful environment in which they find themselves.

In The Bottom Billion, economist Paul Collier suggests that it is not uncommon for youths to join rebel causes (often as child soldiers) if there is even the slightest chance that success will bring them a “good life”.

When all else goes to hell, people, and particularly impressionable youth, get desperate for an escape. If the nation’s next generation continues to suffer, instability and violent sectarianism may continue to plague Syria and the Middle East for years to come.

So how do we fix this?

UNICEF’s Under Siege concludes with a call for the international community to fund and follow six crucial steps:

1. End the cycle of violence in Syria now

2. Grant immediate access to the under-reached 1 million children inside Syria

3. Create an environment where children are protected from exploitation and harm

4. Invest in children’s education

5. Help children’s inner healing through psychological care and support

6. Provide support to host communities and governments to mitigate the social and economic impact of the conflict on families.

While they may seem astoundingly idealistic, having these goals to strive towards should help focus members of the global community.

Furthermore, we should never understate the incredible work done by organisations such as UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

To finish on a hopeful note, here is an account by an MSF psychologist named Charlotte, in which she describes her increasingly encouraging encounters with a 6-year-old Syrian girl:

There was a 6-year-old little girl who, since she saw her brother torn apart by a bomb, had become almost completely silent. She would draw lots of pictures with loads of bright colors but they were quite basic compared to what other children of her age can do. She used the splurges of color with no visible human shape to conjure up the image of the terrible thing that had happened to her brother. They represented something specific that I tried to understand through a question and answer game, sort of riddles, in order to secure our therapeutic relationship. She was quite happy to let me into her world, but in her own time, so I had to move forward very slowly and respect the immense suffering expressed in her drawings. She would answer my questions about her pictures with a nod of the head and sometimes with words spoken so softly I had difficulty in hearing them. She would press on her pens so hard that the paper would tear and it looked to me that her fierce coloring of the vague shapes allowed her to empty her head and the feelings she had deep inside. At the end of each session, she was quite happy to give me her picture, to leave it with me, as if this was a way for her to lighten the suffering she had cast aside in it. But she wanted something to take away in exchange, a small toy, a trinket… maybe to fill the gap that was eating away at her, or maybe because ours really was a relationship of sharing and give-and-take! During our sessions she would offer up her anguish like a gift, a difficult and painful process that she needed encouragement with. And at the age of only six, it took real courage…

Perhaps part of the answer to all this suffering lies in careful and gradual acts of empathy like this.

Click here if you’d like to make a donation to UNHCR and help Syria’s Children.

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