The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of War

Abstract

 Healthcare Under Fire: Stories from Healthcare Workers During Armed Conflict 19 supposed to facilitate the family’s passageway through Iran into Iraq, again under disguise as part of a moving caravan of religious pilgrims. From there, they would be met by a non-governmental organisation operation who would fly the family in a military plane to a processing camp for refugees in Albania with no further destination in place for Azad to receive healthcare. Should I relay this option to the family even in the face of its futility, or should I deny the family their agency and refuse? Was I making a decision about the child’s fate? I stayed silent. With a few dedicated colleagues, I continued to pressure the British government while considering whether I should draw on the connections of an Afghan colleague based in the United Kingdom with a medical background. I was cautious about approaching my colleague. The cultures of conflict travel. I couldn’t be sure about any discriminatory views my colleague might have towards Hazaras. One phone call or one wrong move from me could lead to the family’s execution. The formal route of a government-supported medical evacuation to specialist surgeons collapsed. It did not reach a sudden death; rather, the leash to hope retreated and ebbed away silently as if the leaders with the key to power were ashamed. Their indifference was pitiful. The family escaped to another neighbouring country, where I met them some months later. The child would only cry. Cries were his only sounds. Or silence. Silence of a story that was beyond any words he would form. The father was bereft. At the moment of the blast, the child was sitting in the sky on his father’s shoulders. The legacy of trauma took away the child’s trust in his father’s embrace, the arms that had tried to lift him to another country, another life, another world. Now, the family is in exile in their third country in two years. Another language. Another culture. Another government. A child in conflict is never disentangled from war. Azad’s birth and near-death were imprisoned in the cradle of a conflict-ridden land. Will Azad return and live through the meaning of his name—freedom—in his lifetime, or will he, like his parents, forever be a war child? My final reflection is towards healthcare. My gaze now sees that healing is an ethical endeavour. The philosophy of medicine clashed with the confrontation of conflict, and for Azad, attacked and violated by indiscriminate armed actors, his story of suffering was written by the governments who failed to free him. B The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of War Richard W Sams II I remember standing in the kitchen of our home on Camp Pendleton—a United States Marine Corps base in Southern California—listening to National Public Radio (NPR) and doing dishes in the fall of 2002. President Bush announced to the world that he was considering a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq on the pretext of Saddam Hussein harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Three months later, as a Navy Family Physician, I deployed with a surgical company in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reflecting on the situation with a like-minded close friend, I was not sure— would this be a just war? A necessary war? In my mind, it did not rise to the level of conscientious objection, yet the rightness of invading another country with all the anticipated death and destruction was not clear. En route to Kuwait, we laid over in Spain. While fixed to a TV in a holding area, I watched the Secretary of State make a case to the UN and the world that removing Hussein from power would protect us from mobile anthrax labs that could kill tens of thousands. I thought to myself, Either he is absolutely right, and we are protecting our country and the rest of the free world, or he is terribly mistaken and we are embarking on a disaster. As we trained, prepared, and waited in our tents to invade, we listened to the news on “Voice of 20 Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics...