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TechnoratiCivilians 'Bear the Brunt of War'
Civilians bear the brunt of modern conflict, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross suggests.
![[Villagers pass Philippine government troops hunting Muslim rebels in the hinterlands of Piagapoon the southern Philippine island of Mindanao in March. A Red Cross survey of eight war-torn countries has found that more than half of the civilians polled were forced to flee their homes -- while in Afghanistan and Liberia torture was a common experience. (AFP/File/Cherryl Vergeire)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/redcross_civilians.jpg "redcross_civilians.jpg")
The report, called "Our world, views from the field" asked 4,000 civilians from eight countries to relate their personal experiences of war.
Of those, 44% said they had witnessed armed conflict first hand and one in three had seen a relative killed.
The countries were Afghanistan, Georgia, Haiti, Liberia, DR Congo, Colombia, Lebanon and the Philippines.
More than half - 56% - said they had been forced to leave their homes and almost half had lost contact with a loved one.
The research was commissioned to mark the 150th anniversary of an event that became the inspiration for the founding of the Red Cross movement.
Henri Dunant founded the organisation after witnessing the dead and dying soldiers at the battle of Solferino during the Italian wars of independence.
The fighting in 1859 caused 40,000 military casualties but only one civilian death.
Today, says Red Cross director of operations, Pierre Krähenbuhl, civilians are the chief sufferers in war.
The report also suggests that most civilians caught up in war turn first to relatives or friends for help, a sign, the ICRC says, that more needs to be done to support those carers.
7 Comments so far
Show AllFunny thing how assasination is so frowned upon l guess it's because all those leaders swim in the same cesspool
Philosophical queation: How important or wealthy do you have to be before you are assassinated rather than murdered?
By extrapolation, ALL targets are 'military targets'. When Bush Sr. went to Iraq and we bombed a school, we said, 'ooops, it had a chain link fence around it, so it looked like a military compound'. At the beginning of this Iraqi fiasco, we bombed power plants and water treatment plants because they could give 'comfort and aid' to our "enemy", not withstanding that military compounds usually have generator back up while civilians don't.
Of course the civilian population bears the brunt of the pain and suffering. Always has, be it the army taking livestock to feed the troops or children playing in bombed out tanks, taken out by 'depleted Uranium' shells and getting tumors, or having to suffer without a source of electtricity, water or food supply. I don't know what the International Committee of the Red Cross spent on this 'study', but if it was more than twenty bucks they wasted their money..... oh yeah, I guess that since they operate on tax free donations it doesn't really matter how they waste "their" money. There's more where that came from.
Terrorism goes back a long way. Don't you remember the terrorists that illegally boarded a ship and dumped its cargo overboard to protest exploitation by the government due to taxes and imposts? Then, there were the terrorists that resisted the legal attempts of the government's military forces to enforce the law.
These terrorists formed their own government and authorized terrorist groups to harass the legal government wherever they could on land and sea. The government did everything it could to rid itself of these terrorists, picking up their families, burning their homes and businesses, occupying their homes with their own troops.
Eventually, after suffering horribly for years, those terrorists managed to defeat the overextended military of the government and eventually gained their freedom, at great price and sacrifice.
Note: For "terrorists," above, substitute "Patriots," Minute Men," George Washington, et al. Washington and his foreign "terrorist," Lafayette, were probably King George's "Osama bin Laden."
That's because we don't line up armies and charge anymore.
We drop 2000 pound bombs from 50,000 feet.
Yet more evidence for outlawing war in the 21st century. "Just war" is no longer possible, and the fallacy of any war being a "good war", including Afghanistan, is now finally shown.
Of course, the usual war profiteers will lie and distort, using their reliable, well-bribed Congressional tools and fawning media to drum up support for more weapons and more war.
The Corporate-Military-Congressional Complex only cares about profits and power, not lives.
"When will they ever learn?"
Well of course Civilians 'Bear the Brunt of War'
They are un-armored soft targets who never shoot back.
They are easy to spot having raised hands waving white flags.
What 'brave' soldier could resist much less miss such easy targets?